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New Orleans 2005 Program Session
Opening Plenary Session
Thursday, August 18, 2005
8:00 AM-9:30 AM  Recorded session
SAA President Randall Jimerson
69th Presidential Address
“Embracing the Power of Archives”
Archivists are
not
handmaidens of history, passive
guardians of cultural treasures, or gatekeepers limiting access to endangered
documents.
Instead, archivists play
an active and essential role in shaping the content of our repositories, in
interpreting them (through finding aids, for example), and in either encouraging
or limiting various types of access to “our” records.
We must embrace the power of
archives.
And we must understand
that this power carries with it a solemn obligation to use it wisely, to
acknowledge that neutrality and objectivity are desirable but unattainable in
pure form, and to ensure that archives protect the public interest rather than
the privileges of the political, economic, social, or intellectual
elite.
Ambassador Andrew Young
Keynote
Speaker
As
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Congressman, mayor, humanitarian,
ordained minister, Civil Rights leader, international businessman, and sports
enthusiast,
New Orleans
native Andrew Young has been at the
center of some of the most important events in the second half of the
20
th
century.
A champion
of
U.S.
and international
civil rights, Ambassador Young has helped to shape our country’s policies as an
activist, Member of Congress, and mayor of
Atlanta
during that city’s emergence
(1982-1989).
Now chairman of
GoodWorks International, Ambassador Young will address his commitment to
preserving the history of diversity in
America
.
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