Principles of Access to Archives: A Commentary
8 June 2024
Foreword
Originally a commentary on one principle of the Principles of Access to Archives was published each month in the Human Rights Working Group News of the International Council on Archives, beginning in September 2012 and ending in June 2013. Each month’s essay provided examples of contemporary issues related to the Principle under consideration and suggested archival responsibilities related to it. They have been only lightly edited for this publication.
In a brief commentary is impossible to provide examples for all the issues a Principle raises, both the stated issues and those that may be called “penumbras” or shadows that surround the statement. Environmental issues, gender issues, privacy issues of genetic testing results, impacts of artificial intelligence: all of these are implied by the texts of the Principles. Readers are encouraged to think of other examples for the use of the Principles as they read the brief discussions included.
Trudy Huskamp Peterson
Certified Archivist
Chairperson, Working Group on Access to Archives
Introduction
As researchers tell it, when they ask archivists for access to sensitive material, they usually get one of four responses: “Those sorts of records were never created.” “Those records were destroyed.” “We don’t have those records.” “You can’t see those records.” For persons denied access to records important to them, for whatever reason, access is unfinished business.
The International Council on Archives, in a step that should put the review of access policy on the table at every archives, adopted the Principles of Access to Archives at its August 2012 annual general meeting. The Principles, ten in number with accompanying explanatory text, address access issues in both public and private archives, in archives of businesses and faith-based organizations, in educational institutions and in archives holding private papers. Both the Principles and the accompanying text are authoritative. The Principles are accompanied by an introduction that discusses the purpose and scope of the Principles and the shared responsibilities for implementing them. The Introduction summarizes the ethos of the Principles in the opening paragraph:
“Archives are preserved for use by present and future generations. An access service links archives to the public; it provides information for users about the institution and its holdings; it influences whether the public will trust the custodians of archives institution and the service they provide. Archivists support a culture of openness, but accept restrictions as required by laws and other authorities, ethics, or donor requirements. When restrictions are unavoidable, they must be clear and limited in scope and duration. Archivists encourage responsible parties to formulate clear mandates and consistent rules for access, but in the absence of unambiguous guidelines, archivists determine appropriate access by considering professional ethics, equity and fairness, and legal requirements. Archivists ensure that restrictions are fairly and reasonably applied, prevent unauthorized access to properly restricted archives, and provide the widest possible use of archives by monitoring restrictions and promptly removing those no longer warranted. Archivists adhere to the Principles of Access to Archives in formulating and implementing access policies.”
The Principles as adopted are found here: https://www.ica.org/resource/principles-of-access-to-archives/
Access to particular bodies of records and for particular users will always be problematic. Managing access is never easy, but with the Principles researchers and archivists have a document to use to have a meaningful conversation about the availability of records for consultation as a result both of legal authorization and the existence of finding aids.
A coalition of freedom of information organizations, known as the FOI Advocates Network, had promoted 28 September as International Right to Know Day. Responding to that interest, the UNESCO General Conference voted on 17 November 2015 to designate 28 September as International Day for the Universal Access to Information and invited “all Member States, United Nations system organizations, and other international and regional organizations, as well as civil society, including non-governmental organizations and individuals, to celebrate that Day in a manner which each considers most appropriate and without financial implications for the regular budget of UNESCO.” https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000235297 September 28 would be an excellent day for archivists to discuss the Principles with the research public.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 1
The public has the right of access to archives of public bodies. Both public and private entities should open their archives to the greatest extent possible.
Access to the archives of government is essential for an informed society. Democracy, accountability, good governance and civic engagement require a legal guarantee that individuals will have access to the archives of public bodies established by national, self-governing territories and local governments, intergovernmental institutions, and any organization and any legal or natural person performing public functions and operating with public funds. All archives of public bodies are open to the public unless they fall under an exception grounded in law.
Institutions, whether public or private, holding private archives do not have a legal obligation to open the private archives to external users unless specific legislation or regulation imposes this responsibility on them. However, many private archives hold institutional records and personal papers that have significant value for understanding social, economic, religious, community and personal history as well as for generating ideas and supporting development. Archivists working in private institutions and managing the institution’s archives encourage their institution to provide public access to its archives, especially if the holdings will help protect rights or will benefit public interests. Archivists stress that opening institutional archives helps maintain institutional transparency and credibility, improves public understanding of the institution’s unique history and its contributions to society, helps the institution fulfill its social responsibility to share information for the public good, and enhances the institution’s image.
The first Principle is the overarching statement of the importance of access to archives. It is the frame for the rest of the Principles.
Archivists and researchers alike agree that government records are essential for understanding the past. Here is just one example: Between 1946 and 1958 the people of the Marshall Islands endured sixty-seven experimental nuclear tests detonated by the United States, which was the administrator of the Trust Territory of Micronesia, which included the Islands. The residents of four atolls were exposed to fallout contamination that compromised the health of individuals, made their lands uninhabitable and destroyed their marine and faunal resources. In 1986 the Islands gained sovereignty as the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) when the U.S. and the RMI governments entered into a Compact of Free Association, under which the U.S. accepted responsibility for the damage caused by the tests and established a compensation fund to be administered by a Tribunal set up by the RMI government. In order to fairly distribute the proceeds of the fund, the RMI government and its Nuclear Claims Tribunal had to know precisely what happened before, during and after the tests; in other words, they needed access to U.S. archives. U.S. authorities began identifying and declassifying relevant U.S. government records, and although thousands of pages of documents were delivered to the RMI, some documents were declassified only in part and some were totally withheld. The Tribunal, pressed to begin making compensation payments, went ahead based on incomplete information. But the RMI government refuses to close the question of what really happened in the islands until all the records are open; they insist that there can be “No Closure without Full Disclosure.”
Government records are not enough, however, for us to gain a full understanding of the events of the past. As the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations wrote when commenting on a draft of the Principles of Access, “In a world of NGOs, extra-national governance, non-governmental actors funded by (indirectly) states, and various forms of non-governmental/state agreements and activities that affect societies, the fullest possible archival record must be maintained even if privacy, property rights, and/or national security delay access.” A few examples will show the need for access to archives in the private sector.
*The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission researched “the history, purpose, operation and supervision of the Indian Residential School system, the effect and consequences of IRS (including systemic harms, intergenerational consequences and the impact on human dignity) and the ongoing legacy of the residential schools.” An estimated 100,000 First Nations children were taken from their families and forced to attend 130 residential schools over more than a century, starting in the 1880s and ending in 1996. The majority of the schools were operated by Roman Catholic entities, about a quarter of the schools run by the Anglican Church, and the remainder by Presbyterians and the United Church. Records of all these churches were vital resources for the work of the Commission.
*In 2012 the French national railroad, Société nationale des chemins de fer français, digitized and put on its public website all its records of the World War II period, answering a demand from war victims that it account for its role in deportations to Nazi concentration camps.
*In Argentina, Memoria Abierta, founded in 1999 by a coalition of NGOs, collects, preserves and makes available the materials the NGOs amassed over the years to document the human rights abuses perpetrated during the “dirty war” of 1976-1983.
As the Universal Declaration on Archives so eloquently says, archives are a “vital necessity . . for supporting business efficiency, accountability and transparency, for protecting citizens’ rights, for establishing individual and collective memory, for understanding the past, and for documenting the present to guide future actions.” Access turns necessity into reality.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 2
Institutions holding archives make known the existence of the archives, including the existence of closed materials, and disclose the existence of restrictions that affect access to the archives.
Users must be able to locate the archival institution that holds material of interest to them. Archivists provide without charge basic information about their institution and the archives it holds. They inform the public of the general rules for use of the holdings in accordance with the institution’s legal mandates, policies and regulations. They ensure that descriptions of the holdings of their archives are current, accurate and comply with international descriptive standards in order to facilitate access. Archivists share draft descriptions of archives with users if final versions are lacking, where this will not compromise the security of the archives or any necessary restrictions on access.
Institutions that give the public access to any part of their archives publish an access policy. Archivists begin with a presumption of openness; they ensure that any access restrictions are written clearly to enable the public to understand them and to enhance consistency in their application.
Users have the right to know whether or not a specific series, file, item or portion of an item exists, even though it is withheld from use, or if it has been destroyed. Archivists reveal the fact that closed records exist through accurate description and insertion of withdrawal sheets or electronic markers. Archivists provide as much information as possible about restricted material, including the reason for the restriction and the date the materials will be reviewed or become available for access, so long as the description does not disclose the information that is the reason for the restriction or violate a binding law or regulation.
This Principle is the first of seven Principles that focus on the relationship between the archives and the user. Four separate ideas are combined in the Principle: archives provide information about the institution (its hours, its location, its rules), information about the records held by the institution (both open and closed to research use), information about the restrictions that generally apply to the holdings of the archives, and information about specific closures within bodies of records that are available for research use. The reasons for providing this information range from the practical (researchers should not be forced to spend time trying to locate records that are in an archives although closed to public use) to the ethical (users should be aware that the records that have been provided to them have had parts withdrawn and should develop their conclusions and interpretations with the full knowledge that they have not seen everything).
Here are two examples of the problem of lack of information about archives.
Guatemala established a truth commission in 1997 at the end of its civil war. As it began its investigations, the commission asked to see the police records. The police denied that they had any archives, saying it had destroyed all its records in the wake of the 1996 peace accords, so the truth commission wrote its report without access to police records. It was not until 2005, half a dozen years after the report was published, that the staff of Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman accidentally stumbled upon the police archives. The records—hundreds of thousands of documents—are now being arranged and described and used to prosecute and convict policemen and other government officials for crimes committed during the long Guatemalan civil war in the last half of the 20th century. (For a review of the police records case, see the swisspeace publication “Archivo historico de la Policia Nacional de Guatemala 2005-2017” https://www.swisspeace.ch/articles/archivo-historico-de-la-policia-nacional-de-guatemala-2005-2017.)
The Guatemala case was a blanket denial that records existed, but denial is a problem at the file and item level, too. If a document is removed from a file without inserting a withdrawal marker in its place or if part of an electronic document is deleted without replacing the deletion with an equal amount of space markers, the researcher has the false belief that he has seen everything when he has not. Electronic deletion became an issue in the U.S. when the National Security Council (NSC) redacted a portion of an electronic document, inserted no replacement markings, and released it. A researcher eventually discovered the omission, and the NSC, embarrassed, had to insert space markers where the information was deleted and re-release the item.
In sum, this Principle says that archivists are honest with their researchers about the institution, the records it holds, and the rules by which it operates. Researchers seek no less.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 3
Institutions holding archives adopt a pro-active approach to access.
Archivists have a professional responsibility to promote access to archives. They communicate information about archives through various means such as Internet and web-based publications, printed materials, public programs, commercial media and educational and outreach activities. They are continually alert to changing technologies of communication and use those that are available and practical to promote the knowledge of archives. Archivists cooperate with other archives and institutions in preparing location registers, guides, archival portals and gateways to assist users in locating records. They proactively provide access to the parts of their holdings that are of wide interest to the public through print publication, digitization, postings on the institution’s website, or by cooperation with external publication projects. Archivists consider user needs when determining how the archives are published.
In the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams,” a farmer walking in his cornfield hears a voice saying, “If you build it, he will come.” He interprets this to mean he should build a baseball field, and by the end of the movie hundreds of people are coming to see a baseball game. Some of us in archives believe that, too: that by building our holdings, researchers will naturally come to us for evidence and information because archives are so self-evidently useful, so obviously a reliable source, managed by virtuous archivists in a trustworthy institution. And yet that’s not how archives look to many non-archivists: housed in forbidding monumental buildings or hidden in basements, with finding aids with little information or insider jargon, unclear or complicated criteria for using the archives, and expensive charges for making copies. Bringing these two images into harmony is more than mere public relations: it is ensuring that people who need the information in archives know they can have access to it, an especially important clarification when the information is needed to defend human rights or to assert that rights have been violated.
Here are two contrasting examples of a pro-active approach.
The “Hillsborough event” was a riot at a Sheffield, England, football stadium in 1989 in which 96 people died. In 2010 the government of the United Kingdom created the Hillsborough Independent Panel to look at the circumstances and aftermath of the disaster, and in 2012 the Panel released its report, publishing online descriptions and digital images of records held by 85 organizations (both public and private sector) and individuals that related to the disaster. The Panel had expected the organizations holding the records to arrange and describe them before giving them to the Panel, but in most cases this did not happen. Ultimately “a team of archivists working with the Panel” arranged the materials and described them using the basic elements of the International Standard for Archival Description (General). This collection, description and online publication is an excellent example of the pro-active approach to providing access to relevant records to the interested public. https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/bcdf1d10-4585-44f2-9e81-b5c528642886/hillsborough-disclosure-document-index
In a case demonstrating the problems caused by the lack of a pro-active approach, Romania, like many countries in Eastern Europe, is struggling with the issue of restitution to former owners of properties confiscated by its Communist government after World War II. In the summer of 2012, Balkan Insight reported that only about 11 percent of property claims in Romania were resolved and “some properties have been illegally given to people who forged ownership documents or inheritance papers” because “the files of the real owners of properties dispossessed by the Communists lie abandoned in the archives of the Property Restitution Agency.” Without an effort to arrange and describe and effectively make the records available, people are denied the opportunity to advance a claim for restitution.
As Principle 3 makes clear, archivists must consider the user when deciding on the type of public outreach to undertake. The U.K. solution works well with a population that has easy access to the Internet; it would work less well in reaching out to the people who live in three-fourths of the countries in the world, where in 2012 on average only 25% of the population have Internet access (by 2023 the International Telecommunications Union estimated that 67% of the world’s population had internet access, but that still left 2.6 billion people offline https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx#gsc.tab=0 ). One approach does not fit all, but there is always an approach that can and should be made.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 4
Institutions holding archives ensure that restrictions on access are clear and of stated duration, are based on pertinent legislation, acknowledge the right of privacy and respect the rights of owners of private materials.
Archivists provide the widest possible access to archives, but they recognize and accept the need for some restrictions. Restrictions are imposed by legislation or by institutional policy, either of the archival institution or its parent body, or by a donor. Archivists ensure that the access policies and rules for their institution are published so that the restrictions and the reasons for them are clear to members of the public.
Archivists seek to limit the scope of restrictions to those imposed by law or to identified instances where a specific harm to a legitimate private or public interest temporarily outweighs the benefit of disclosure at the time. Restrictions are imposed for a limited period, either for a specified period of years or until a specified condition, such as the death of a person, has occurred.
General restrictions apply to all the archival holdings; as appropriate to the nature of the institution, they cover the protection of privacy, safety, investigatory or law enforcement information, commercial secrets, and national security. The scope and duration of the general restrictions must be clear.
Specific restrictions apply only to designated bodies of institutional records and personal papers; they apply for a limited duration. A clear statement of the specific restriction is included in the public archival description of the designated materials.
Access to donated records and personal papers is limited by the conditions established in the instrument of transfer such as a deed of gift, a will, or an exchange of letters. Archivists negotiate and accept donor restrictions on access that are clear, of limited duration and can be administered on equitable terms.
Archivists are committed to the principle that everything in their holdings will eventually be available for reference use, but archivists equally understand the need to strike a balance between the public’s right to know and the need for confidentiality. The result of this balancing may be to close some research materials to public access for some period of time. Provenance is the key to determining access: whether these are the records of the institution of which the archives is a part, with a further distinction between public and private institutions; donated records of another institution; or donated personal materials. Five access concept categories are common to all these sources: privacy, business information, personnel data, investigative information, and statutory restrictions, which in the case of government records may include national security information.
No restriction endures forever. Restrictions either are in force for a specific period or until an event happens or until the passage is time is such that no harm will come from the disclosure. Here is a contemporary example of the problem of indefinite restrictions. The truth commission of El Salvador, which published its report in 1993, transferred its records to the United Nations in New York where they are in the custody of the Secretary-General but held by the UN Archives and Records Management Section. The records are closed to use, with no procedure for making them available to anyone and no time limit on the restriction. Now that the El Salvador government is required by the Inter-American Court to account for its activities in the El Mozote massacre (https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/comunicados/CP_10_12.pdf ), these closed records are an extremely important source for further action. But how will they be made available?
Clarifying definitions is important, too; concepts such as privacy are culture-specific, and their application needs to be clearly articulated to researchers. A Russian researcher and an archivist who provided records to him were arrested in 2009 for violating “personal and family secrets” when researching the deportation and fate of 5000 ethnic Germans who were sent to the gulags between 1945 and 1956. The case turned on what the terms “personal secret” and “family secret” mean. (https://concernedhistorians.org/content_files/file/le/334.pdf) Memorial, a human rights organization in Russia, reported that its researchers found access further restricted in the wake of the case, which is on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Restricting records is making judgments. It is a matter of knowing the applicable law (and its interpretation) and institutional policy, the transfer agreement and donor agreement, looking carefully at the materials, doing research to find out how much is already in the public domain about the subject of the items, understanding the context, and finally deciding. It is a fundamental professional task.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 5
Archives are made available on equal and fair terms.
Archivists provide users with just, fair and timely access to archives without discrimination. Many different categories of persons use archives and access rules may differentiate between categories of users (for example, the general public, adoptees seeking information on birth parents, medical researchers seeking statistical information from hospital records, victims of human rights violations), but the rules apply equally to all persons within each category without discrimination. When a closed item is reviewed and access to it is granted to a member of the general public, the item is available to all other members of the public under the same terms and conditions.
Access determinations are made as rapidly as possible following receipt of the access request.
Records of public bodies that have been disclosed to the public before transfer to the archival institution, except those made public through illegal or unauthorized means, remain accessible after they are transferred regardless of their content, form or age. If only part of the information in an item has been published or is readily available to the public, access to the released information remains open after transfer; the unreleased information is subject to the normal access policy and procedures. Archivists encourage legislative and regulatory actions that open records responsibly and do not support attempts to close information previously made public, either by reclassifying or ordering destruction of materials.
Private institutions holding archives provide equal access to users; however, existing donor agreements, institutional security needs, and related constraints may require archivists to make distinctions between researchers. The criteria used by the private institutions for determining selective access are stated in its public access policy, and archivists encourage their institutions to reduce these exceptions to the greatest extent possible.
Principle 5 couples “equal access” and “fair access.” The linkage is significant. Equal access does not mean that everyone gets to see the same things but rather that (1) categories of users are established that are fair and (2) within those categories each person is given access that is equal in kind but not necessarily in content. For example, if a government permits an adopted person to see the records of his or her adoption, then all other adopted children should have the same right of access to the files of their adoptions, but the government might fairly decide that members of the general public do not have access to the adoption records if the persons involved are still alive. Or, as another example, if a member of the general public is given access to the records of arrests made by local police, all other members of the public should be given access, too.
The Principle also addresses the contentious issues of closing records that have once been open to public research use. It strongly discourages such practices, while recognizing that records disclosed through leaks or error may not be considered official releases by the creating body and therefore the records are not open in the archives. This is clearly a troublesome situation, and archivists seek to resolve anomalous situations like this as quickly as possible.
Principle 5, like all the Principles, applies equally to the records of private organizations and individuals. In some of these cases, donor agreements come into play. For example, a family may engage an official biographer to write about a parent and they want that biographer to have access to all the files, even if some may be withheld from the general research public in accordance with the deed of gift. This is unequal access, but as long as the fact that the biographer can use the papers is public and there is a fair time limit for this privileged access, archival institutions may justify accepting the restriction. However, policies that specify that the records will only be available to “bona fide” researchers without clearly stating what qualifies a researcher as “bona fide” are unfair and are often subject to unequal interpretations.
Researchers should not have to “romance the archivist” to gain access, as one researcher did in an archives in Mali. http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article08220801.aspx. That is precisely what this Principle opposes. All records cannot be opened to all researchers at all times, but researchers should be confident that access to archives is granted on a fair and equitable basis.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 6
Institutions holding archives ensure that victims of serious crimes under international law have access to archives that provide evidence needed to assert their human rights and to document violations of them, even if those archives are closed to the general public.
The Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity (2005) of the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights declares that victims of serious crimes under international law have a right to know the truth about the violations. The Principles emphasize the vital role that access to archives plays in learning the truth, holding persons accountable for human right violations, claiming compensation, and defending against charges of human rights violations. The Principles state that each person is entitled to know whether his or her name appears in State archives and, if it does, to challenge the validity of the information by submitting to the archival institution a statement that will be made available by the archivists whenever the file containing the name is requested for research use.
Archival institutions obtain and hold the evidence needed to protect human rights and to contest the violation of human rights where serious crimes under international law have been committed. Persons seeking access to archives for human rights purposes are given access to the relevant archives, even if those archives are closed to the general public. The right of access for human rights purposes applies to public archives and, to the extent possible, to private archives.
The Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity states plainly that the State must undertake specific measures to protect the right to know, one of which is that the State “must ensure the preservation of, and access to, archives concerning violations of human rights and humanitarian law.” (https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=E%2FCN.4%2F2005%2F102%2FAdd.1&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop&LangRequested=False ) This clearly links the right to information to archives and human rights.
The right to know what the State has done is fundamental, but this right is not without costs. The most famous case of the right to know and the despair of knowing is that of Vera Wollenberger, an East German woman who asked to see the file kept on her by the Stasi, the secret police of the former German Democratic Republic. She found out that her husband had been informing on her. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/12/magazine/east-germans-face-their-accusers.html
Whether the State is obligated to preserve non-governmental records to secure these rights is a question that has not yet been adjudicated, but the sense of responsibility outlined in the Updated Set of Principles suggests that if the State knows that records in non-governmental hands shed light on human rights abuses, it has the duty to preserve them, also.
The South African History Archive (SAHA) published PAIA Unpacked, a guide for lawyers and paralegals using the national Promotion of Access to information Act. The Act provides a right to access information from the records of private bodies (defined in the Act), which “must grant a requester access to a record if: the record is required for the exercise of any rights; the requester has complied with the procedural requirements in the Act; and access is not refused under one of the grounds for refusal.” (https://foip.saha.org.za/static/paia-unpacked-a-resource-for-lawyers-and-paralegals ) While the right to records of a private body is more limited than the right to records of a public body, the link of access to the “exercise of any rights” is squarely within the intent of both the UN Principles and Principle 6.
The need for access is crucial for both individuals and societies. Persons who gain access to records relating to violations of their rights or those of their loved ones may find it a troubling experience, and archivists who provide reference service on these materials might find it useful to have some basic training in handling situations where emotional support is needed. Hard as it is for individuals to look clearly at the troubled past, the cost to society of NOT looking at the collective past is even greater. As the UN Principles say, individuals have a right to know, but there is a corollary “duty to remember, which the State must assume, in order to guard against the perversions of history that go under the names of revisionism or negationism; the knowledge of the oppression it has lived through is part of a people’s national heritage and as such must be preserved.” Archivists are duty-bearers to assure these rights.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 7
Users have the right to appeal a denial of access.
Each archival institution has a clear policy and procedure for appeals of initial denials of access. When a request for access to archives is denied, the reasons for the denial are stated clearly in writing and conveyed to the applicant as soon as possible. Users denied access are informed of their right to appeal the denial of access and the procedures and time limits, if any, for doing so.
For public archives, several levels of appeal may exist, such as a first internal review and a second appeal to an independent and impartial authority established by law. For non-public archives, the appeal process may be internal, but it should follow the same general approach. Archivists who participate in the initial denial provide the reviewing authority with information relevant to the case but do not take part in the decision-making on the appeal.
An appeal makes sure that an arbitrary decision can be challenged and potentially reversed. A senior official reviewing an initial denial may be more willing to see the public benefits of releasing information than is the initial reviewer who often believes that he has no flexibility in following the restriction guidelines. And an appeal is an opportunity to do more extensive research about the contents of the document: is the person whose privacy might be invaded already dead, has information on the event already been officially released.
In a United States case, a son discovered that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had spied on his father. The son was able to get the FBI documents, but access was denied by the CIA. He is appealed the CIA withholding to an inter-agency body that includes the National Archives, hoping that he would finally get the documents on his father. The appeal gave him a second chance, and one outside the total control of the creating agency. (He did get redacted versions of CIA documents: https://www.archives.gov/declassification/iscap/releases.)
In many countries the government’s freedom of information law guarantees that the requester will get a chance to plead his case for access if he is turned down when he makes his first request for access. The United Kingdom has a freedom of information act that includes the right to appeal. The U.K. FOIA statistics for 2011 showed that of the 37 appeals from denials by “monitored bodies” that were decided in 2011, the information commissioner upheld 24 denials in full, overturned 5 in full, and overturned 8 in part. In other words, in 35% of the cases, an appeal resulted in the release of more information. That is an appeal worth making. (By 2020 of the 315 appeals that had “known outcomes,” the original decision upheld in full in 222, 39 were upheld in part and 54 were overturned. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/freedom-of-information-statistics-annual-2021/freedom-of-information-statistics-annual-2021-bulletin )
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 8
Institutions holding archives ensure that operational constraints do not prevent access to archives.
The equal right to access archival records is not simply equal treatment but also includes the equal right to benefit from the archives.
Archivists understand the needs of both existing and potential researchers and use this understanding to develop polices and services that meet those needs and minimize operational constraints on access. In particular, they assist those who are disabled, illiterate or disadvantaged and would otherwise have significant difficulties in using archives.
Governmental archival institutions do not charge an admission fee to persons who want to do research in the archives. When private archival institutions charge admission fees, they should consider the applicant’s ability to pay and the fee charged must not be a bar to use of the archives.
Users, whether visiting the archival institution or living at a distance from it, can obtain copies of archives in the variety of formats that are within the technical capacity of the archival institution. Institutions may make reasonable charges for copying service on demand.
Partial release of archives is a means to provide access when the entire file or item cannot be released. If an archival item contains sensitive information in a few sentences or a limited number of pages, that information is removed and the remainder of the item released for public access. To the greatest extent practicable, archivists do not refuse to redact archives because of the labor required to make redactions; however, if redaction makes the requested item or file misleading or unintelligible, archivists do not redact and the material remains closed.
This Principle addresses several issues, two of which are fees for service and partial release or redaction when entire items or files cannot be released. Here are three examples of situations covered by Principle 8:
Researchers who are unable to learn whether the records are available may waste time and money. In an open letter published in November 2005, three researchers wrote about their problems with archives in Romania. One, a Ph.D. candidate at the Sorbonne, reported that he applied for permission to use the Securitate archives (the Securitate was Romania’s communist-era secret police), paying more than $500 for a permit that he was issued in July 2004. When he went to the archives, however, he learned that finding aids were not available and that he needed to “wait some time to allow [the archives] to carry on the necessary investigations.” There followed a year and a half of “complete silence” (Francois Bocholier, Stefano Bottoni and Dennis Deletant to “Dear Colleagues and Friends,” 2005-11-25, copy in author’s possession).
Fees for using archival materials can be a serious hindrance to some researchers. /for example, documentary filmmakers complain about the cost of obtaining footage about the Holocaust held by Hungary’s National Digital Archive and Film Institute, which charges 4,000 euros per minute for worldwide rights to use footage of Jews in Budapest being marched to trains that would take them to Auschwitz. A staff member of the Institute explained the fee by saying that although the archives is partly state funded, “We also have to make money in order to survive.” https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2013-04-07/ty-article/.premium/want-holocaust-footage-pay-through-nose/0000017f-dbaa-d3ff-a7ff-fbaa03ec0000 With the deaths of most people who can tell the personal story of the Nazi atrocities, the films are increasingly important sources for education about the events, and the costs charged to use the film must not be a bar to their use.
Redaction and release of partial items is an important means of providing enhanced access when an entire item or file cannot be made public, but it must be done carefully and consistently. The National Security Archive, a non-governmental organization in the United States that files many Freedom of Information Act requests, once released copies of four different redactions of the same document over a twelve-year period. Every copy was different, but when all versions are put together the entire document has been released. This inconsistency brings disrepute on the practice of redaction which can be an important tool for providing access while protecting information that must be withheld for a time. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB420/
As the Hungarian archivist pointed out, archives need to stretch their funds and personnel to cover the operations of the archives. But archivists must be sure that the operational constraints they live with and impose on the research public are fair, consistent, and do not prevent access to archives.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 9
Archivists have access to all closed archives and perform necessary archival work on them.
Archivists have access to all closed archives in their custody in order to analyze, preserve, arrange and describe them so that their existence and the reasons for their restriction are known. This archival work helps prevent the archives from being destroyed or forgotten advertently or inadvertently and helps assure the integrity of the archives. Preservation and description of closed archives promotes public confidence in the archival institution and in the archives profession, for it enables archivists to assist the public in tracing the existence and general nature of closed records and learning when and how they will be available for access. If the closed archives have national security classifications or other restrictions that require special clearances, archivists comply with the requisite clearance procedures to gain access.
The archives of the United Nations holds the records of the truth commissions in El Salvador and Guatemala. Under the terms of the deposits, the records are closed to public access. However, the UN interprets this as a ban on any kind of work in the records: preservation, arrangement and description. Consequently, the records, which include fragile electronic and audiovisual records, are deteriorating.
In too many countries the national archives is in theory responsible for the records of the government but does not have access—even for preservation purposes—to inspect storage conditions or even ascertain the volume and condition of some records including those of the current and past heads of state. These are impossible situations. Archivists must be trusted to ensure that records are preserved and described, whether or not the records must be restricted from public access.
Principles of Access to Archives, Principle 10
Archivists participate in the decision-making process on access.
Archivists help their institutions establish access policies and procedures and review archives for possible release under existing access guidelines. Archivists work with lawyers and other partners in deciding on the basic framework and interpretation of restrictions, which the archivists then implement. Archivists know the archives, the access restrictions, the needs and requirements of the stakeholders and what information is already in the public domain on the subject to which the records relate; archivists apply that knowledge when making access decisions. Archivists help the institution achieve informed decisions and consistent, reasonable outcomes.
Archivists monitor restrictions, reviewing materials and removing restrictions that are no longer applicable.
Between 1946 and 1948 the U.S. Public Health Service, several Guatemala government ministries, and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (which became the Pan American Health Organization) cooperated in a study of sexually transmitted diseases. The experiment, carried out in Guatemala principally by a U.S. Health Service doctor with the assistance of a Guatemala official, tried to infect soldiers and prisoners with syphilis and gonorrhea, both directly and by permitting infected prostitutes to have sex with them. In addition, inmates in Guatemala’s only mental asylum were involved in infectious tests. When the lead researcher left the government, he took the records of the experiment (both paper records and still photographs) with him as his personal property instead of leaving them with the Service which would eventually have turned them over to the U.S. National Archives. In 1990 the researcher donated the records to a quasi-private university in the U.S. State of Pennsylvania, but he controlled access to them until he died. After that the dean of the university’s graduate school of public health controlled access. When a history professor asked to use the records, the dean authorized complete access, apparently without reviewing the records. Consequently, the researcher saw all the reports, names and photographs of the persons who were the subjects of the experiment, some of whom are still alive—a significant invasion of their privacy. At every stage of this records story, archivists were excluded from participation in access decisions, which were first made by the lead researcher, then by a university official and finally left to the discretion of the history professor.
The point of Principle 10 is the archival role in the process of access: participation in writing guidelines, cooperation in initial decisions, and continual review and release. Like archival preservation, access is a program to be managed, not a problem to be solved.