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2002-2003 Annual Report
Mission
The mission of the Privacy and Confidentiality Roundtable is to provide a
forum for the discussion of privacy and confidentiality issues and their legal
and ethical implications for archival practice. The P&C RT welcomes all
interested members.
Highlights
While 2002 was a busy year for the Privacy and Confidentiality Roundtable
(P&C RT), 2003 is shaping up to be just as busy. The P&C RT has continued
its tradition of successfully developing and sponsoring session proposals --
at the 2002 Annual Meeting, five sessions focused on P&C issues while an
additional four were accepted by the 2003 Program committee to be presented
this coming August in Los Angeles. Another major highlight for the P&C
RT was the development and activation of our website, which became "live" on
March 24, 2003 thanks to the efforts of Jill Katte and SAA's Brian Doyle.
Activities & Accomplishments
2002 Annual Meeting
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2002 Annual Steering Committee Breakfast
The steering committee, P&C RT members and guest Nancy McCall met for
breakfast at the Sheraton Birmingham's Atrium Cafe. Privacy and confidentiality
issues and roundtable business were discussed.
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Election of Officers
Julie Herrada, Timothy Pyatt and Anita Weber were elected to the P&C
RT Steering Committee. Connell Gallagher, as 2001-2002 Past Chair, was
responsible for recruiting Tim, Julie and Anita.
The 2002-2003 Steering Committee includes:
Past Chair: Timothy Murray
Chair: Aimee Felker
Vice Chair/Chair Elect: Timothy Pyatt
Diane Windham Shaw
Cathy Henderson
Julie Herrada
Anita Weber
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RT Annual Program
In addition to the annual business meeting and a brief book review of Philip
Melanson's Secrecy Wars, the 2002 RT program included a review by Sue
Hodson of privacy and confidentiality issues in the news and a spirited
panel discussion moderated by Connell Gallagher on "Privacy and Confidentiality
Then and Now." Panelists included Menzi Behrnd-Klodt, Mark Greene, Sara
S. Hodson, and Nancy McCall.
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Sessions Sponsored
The 2002 Annual Meeting in Birmingham featured four sessions proposed by
P&C RT members and sponsored by the roundtable. These included:
- Administering Third-Party Privacy Rights in Manuscript Collections
Timothy D. Murray, Chair, University of Delaware
Julie Herrada, University of Michigan, "Letters to the Unabomber: Third
Party Privacy Issues in the Ted Kaczynski Papers"
Stephen Enniss, Emory University, "Public and Private Selves and the
Making of the Ted Hughes Archive"
Susan von Salis, Radcliffe Institute, "Serving the Public While Protecting
Privacy: The Archivist's Conundrum"
The speakers draw from their experience handling third-party privacy
issues while administering personal papers whose contents underscore
how volatile this issue is. How do you balance the public's right to
know with an individual's right to privacy? The collections include
the papers of the British poet Ted Hughes, the papers of the Unabomber
Ted Kaczynski, and a women's history archive with papers that document,
among others, prisoners, private adoptions, pornography, and lesbian,
bisexual, and transgendered people.
- Assisting Researchers and Protecting Privacy: Managing Access to
Patient Information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA)
Lisa A. Mix, Chair, University of California, San Francisco
Joanne E. Pollak, Johns Hopkins Medicine, "The Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act: Implications for Archivists"
Aimee M. Felker, International Monetary Fund, "Privacy vs. Need-to-Know:
Issues in Medical Records Access from Two Perspectives"
Jonathan Schmitz, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, "The
Seven Watchmen: Providing Protection and Access to Health Archives in
Canada"
The changing medical industry, new technological capabilities, and
a shifting regulatory environment are altering the balance between
research and privacy/confidentiality issues. The Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has led to new privacy regulations that
have profound implications for archivists whose collections include
patient health information. Speakers in this session will present different
perspectives on the various competing rights, obligations, and legal
regulations archivists must consider when handling access to health
care information.
- Trends and Changes in Privacy and Confidentiality: A Discussion
of the Impact of Technology, Law, and Security Concerns in the U.S.
and Canada
Menzi L. Behrnd-Klodt, Chair, Pleasant Company / Klodt and Associates
Paul C. Lasewicz, IBM
Bruce Craig, National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History
Gordon Rabchuk, Royal Bank of Canada
Rapidly changing technology makes invasion of privacy easy. Legislatures
and courts react with new privacy protections. Governments and businesses
keep secrets, yet share and market personal informational. Multi-nationals
face different legal requirements. This panel will review the current
state of privacy and confidentiality in American and Canadian law,
ethics, technology and the archival implications. The audience is invited
to discuss archival practices, specific privacy and access issues,
and possible future trends.
- Finding Our Roots, Respecting Our Ancestors' Privacy: Privacy and
Confidentiality Issues in Genealogical Research
Emma Wilmer, Chair, International Monetary Fund
Timothy Salls, New England Historic Genealogical Society, "Another Generation
Found: Serving the Genealogist, A Dedicated Genealogical Society's Mission"
Robert Johnson-Lally, Archdiocese of Boston, "Found on the Church Doorstep:
Privacy, Sacramental Records and Other Genealogy Sources"
Arlene Schmuland, Utah State Archives, "Genealogical Research & Access
to Death, Adoption and Military Records: A Case Study"
Genealogists are the primary research population at many archival
repositories. As genealogists search for their roots, professional
archivists must balance their rights to access and the need to respect
the privacy rights of individuals and their families. This session
will explore how archivists serve genealogy researchers' needs while
also respecting the privacy of individuals identified in their repositories'
holdings and influencing the legislative directives relating to these
records.
2003 Annual Meeting
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Election of Officers
Timothy Murray, Past Chair, will be recruiting candidates to run for Vice
Chair/Chair Elect and Steering Committee (2 positions). Interested prospective
candidates should contact Tim at the University of Delaware, Special
Collections Library, Newark, DC 19717-5267, Tel: (302) 831-6952, E-mail: tdm@udel.edu
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Session Proposals Developed & Accepted
The Roundtable actively develops and sponsors program sessions for the
Annual Meetings and has historically had three or more sessions accepted
for the program. This year six sessions proposals were developed and
four were accepted. The following sessions proposed and endorsed by the
Roundtable will be presented at the Los Angeles meeting:
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Cultural Sensitivity and Intellectual Property in Anthropological
Papers: Ethics and Access
The goal of this session is to provide the audience with a better understanding
of cultural sensitivity and intellectual property issues and will focus
on anthropological collections, in particular field notes, photographs,
and moving images. This session picks up on themes raised at several
sessions on ethics and access at the Birmingham meeting.
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Myth and Reality: Records of the RFK Assassination
2003 marks the 35th anniversary of the assassination of Democratic presidential
candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The 2003 SAA Annual Meeting will be in
Los Angeles at a hotel two miles from the Ambassador Hotel in which
Kennedy was shot. In addition to the geographic location and historical
significance, understanding how and why records relating to RFK's assassination
are located on both coasts at the California State Archives and the
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth is of great importance to the
archival profession so that as archivists we can better understand
the historical issues, privacy concerns, jurisdictional responsibilities,
and access needs of the records related to national events and prominent
persons.
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To Have But Not to Hold? Institutional vs. Private Ownership of Email
Records
University and corporate administrators and employees create and receive
thousands of emails from public and private servers every day in the
course of business. These records are often outside the review of archivists
and unscheduled by records managers with the email authors unclear about
content ownership. Access to these official and quasi-official communications
are increasingly sought by the media and university litigants with archivists
and records managers often serving as mediators. Speakers in this session
will discuss their ongoing research on campus and corporate email usage
and their experience with public requests for access to email under public
records and FOIA laws.
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Archives Unplugged: Privacy and Confidentiality 101
Just what do we mean by "privacy" and "confidentiality?" What are our
legal and ethical obligations as archivists to provide access yet protect
the privacy rights of individuals associated with our collections? This
seminar, led by two former chairs of the Privacy & Confidentiality
Roundtable, will use a combination of lecture and discussion to highlight
the challenges of balancing access with privacy and confidentiality in
the wide variety of records under our care.
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2003 Annual Steering Committee Breakfast
The P&C RT Steering Committee generally meets for breakfast on either
Thursday or Friday morning during the SAA Annual Meeting. Any SAA attendee
who is interested in becoming active in the P&C RT is welcome to join
us! This year's meeting time and place have not yet been selected; pertinent
details will be posted on the P&C website or may be obtained by contacting
either Aimee Felker or Tim Pyatt as the annual meeting approaches.
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2003 RT Annual Program planned
New eyes, old eyes, perhaps even all eyes on the keyhole: Join the Privacy
and Confidentiality Roundtable at the SAA Annual Meeting in Los Angeles
on Saturday, August 23, 2003 from 8:00-9:30 a.m. to discuss privacy & confidentiality
issues in the news, review recent P&C publications, and participate
in an in-depth discussion of the unique confidentiality requirements
and restrictions placed on military operations and POW debriefings and
how they affect your freedom to access this information.
New Accomplishments
Jill Katte and Timothy Pyatt developed the now live P&C RT Web site, which
can be found at: http://www.archivists.org/roundtables/privacy/index.asp.
In addition to general information about the roundtable, the site includes
a web-based bibliography of privacy and confidentiality resources for archivists
and librarians. To contribute to the bibliography, please contact: Christopher
M. Laico, Archivist, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University Law
School, Tel: (212) 854-4786 or by e-mail: claico@law.columbia.edu
Projects in the works
The forthcoming Privacy and Confidentiality Reader, edited by Roundtable members
Menzi BehrndčKlodt and Peter Wosh, will be published by SAA.
For more information about the SAA Privacy and Confidentiality Roundtable,
please contact:
Chair (2002-2003):
Aimee M. Felker
National Archives and Records Administration
NWML, Room 2200
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001
Tel: (301) 837-0663
aimee.felker@nara.gov
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (2003-2004):
Timothy D. Pyatt
Duke University Archives
PO Box 90292
341 Perkins Library
Durham, NC 27708
919/684-5637
fax: 919/660-5987
tim.pyatt@duke.edu
Submitted to SAA by Aimee Felker
Last updated October 4, 2007
For corrections and additions, please contact Heather Dean: heather.dean@yale.edu
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