Playing Fair with the Right to Privacy

Abstract

Archivists and personal papers and manuscripts librarians have been unable to reach consensus over the years on how best to balance the needs of researchers with the privacy rights of individuals whose letters, photos, writings, and journals have come to be held in archives or personal papers collections without their consent. This article reviews the spectrum of opinion both past and present on this issue and takes the archival profession to task for its continuing failure to adopt a firm and unambiguous position on access rights. It concludes by offering a solution that, if implemented, would provide consistent access guidelines applicable to all non-government-controlled collections and, more importantly, would secure the long overdue right to privacy for those unwitting contributors who are unable to defend that right for themselves.

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