Richard J. Cox
MARAC
Archivists and records managers have wrestled with the implications, theoretical and practical, of electronic records and information systems for a couple of generations. Some discussions have become heated debate, suggesting a Doomsday scenario of the demise of the documentary universe.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the unease with the electronic systems generating and maintaining records is about a lot more than technical expertise or insurmountable technical challenges. In the late winter 2007, we gained ample evidence of this when the Society of American Archivists (SAA) leadership matter-of-factly announced that within a couple of weeks it was going to dump the online archives of the Archives and Archivists listserv. We were told this was merely an appraisal decision – something that most archivists do as a routine part of daily operations. But, was it a good appraisal process?
We know there are differences of opinion about appraisal objectives, different methodologies for this function, and a variety of circumstances that can transform the most seemingly straightforward appraisal assignment into a nightmare. Indeed, SAA’s initial message alluded to a number of these issues, particularly costs, intellectual property, and technical aspects concerning the list’s electronic archives.
There were other aspects of the SAA message raising concerns. We were informed that the listserv archives included little evidence about SAA’s history and that its content is “highly uneven.” Was the archives list supposed to reflect the SAA and its activities? And, what does “highly uneven” really mean? In fact, one might sense that this indicates that there were some difficulties with understanding just what a listserv represents or how it relates to other documentary forms. References to evaluating some products (not cited, however) of the listserv archives for its research value and the use of unnamed educators and the generation of some kind of appraisal report not released in full all contributed to the sense of a closed or secretive process counter to what many archives were seeking to do in their appraisal efforts.
Does this SAA appraisal decision reflect a continuing unease with dealing with electronic records and information systems? Or, perhaps, the decision underscores poor leadership and the challenges SAA faces with speaking for the entire American archival community, maybe even the difficulties facing all professional associations in the digital age where people can come together and work with each without having to be present physically in expensive hotels and cities.
In this paper I consider the nature of listservs and other similar forms of virtual networked communities and examine in greater detail the debate that ensued when the SAA leadership announced its decision. My argument is that while it is difficult to see this appraisal decision or the report of it as a model for appraisal work, that this is not a case merely about appraisal. Nor, for that matter, is this a case concerning difficulties with electronic recordkeeping systems, although it sends poor messages about how well archivists are dealing with such records. Rather, I believe that this is mostly a lapse in professional leadership that inadvertently conveys serious problems with appraising digital materials. In fact, the ease of communicating and collaborating with each other via listservs and other such networked communities is a significant factor in how records professionals now work. The initial decision by the SAA leadership to destroy the Archives & Archivists listserv archives not only reflects a lack of understanding of the importance of such virtual communities, but it suggests that professional associations need to rethink their role or face challenges that may make them irrelevant in the near future.
From its earliest days, the Archives & Archivists listserv assumed an important position in the professional dialogue among archivists and other records professionals, recognized nearly from its beginning by SAA leadership (Frank Burke in his 1992 presidential address) as an important (if often flawed) component of professional leadership, generating defenses of the list as a “kind of electronic town meeting in which all are welcome and encouraged to express their views” and a “threat to business as usual.” This seems to be one of the primary characteristics of the recent debate about the maintenance of the list’s archives.
Listservs are, of course, messy. Posters send in jokes, tangential commentaries, and considerable fluff that no one is likely to think is very important, but that add to the character and culture of a list (and also explaining the proliferation of new kinds of etiquette guides). Gossip and professional discourse can be readily found in most other venues supporting professional debate and conversation, although the ease of composing and posting messages before one’s brain kicks into gear is a hallmark of these lists and e-mail in general. Both e-mail and listservs can be quite a window into the most deeply emotion-laden and contested elements of any social or professional group.
Whatever the theoretical discourse might be about the value and utility of the archives listserv, it was obvious that it built a virtual community and that it was being used from the beginning by instructors of archival courses as a way to orient students to the current issues and debates within the field. Students, and other newly entering members of the professional tribe, are quite familiar with the mechanics of listservs, blogs, wikis, and a host of other virtual communities.
The embrace by some educators of the Archives & Archivists listserv ought not be a surprise, although the more recent assessment by some unnamed educators of the value of the listserv’s archives is a little puzzling. For many years now, I have required that archives students monitor the listserv both because it has an uncanny ability to feature a debate about a professional issue that is being discussed in class and because it reveals so many different attitudes and opinions, more than is normally reflected in the professional and scholarly literature guarded by the barriers of peer-review and publishing norms and standards. The controversy about the decision to dump the listserv’s archives occurred in the mid-way point of my course on archival appraisal, and as you might imagine it provided grist for considerable discussion about archival appraisal methodology, public dissemination of appraisal decisions, and a variety of other topics related to this course.
We can contrast such perspectives about listservs within the archival community with that of other professional groups. Research on journalists suggests that this professional group has not embraced as fully listservs and other online discussion groups. A study of a listserv supporting those engaged in information science discerned a number of reasons why participants in that community value this forum, seeing five roles: “information dissemination, knowledge exchange, community building and social binding, discussion, and collaboration.” One wonders whether such notions of the virtual communities ought to make archivists more eager to preserve and manage their archives as important windows into many different professional and societal groups. Perhaps rather than seeing the necessity of destroying this listserv archives SAA could have embraced it as an opportunity to experiment with the preservation of the documentation of such virtual communities, giving it an opportunity to take a high profile lead in demonstrating that these kinds of communities are important to be documented.
What is a Listserv?
A
listserv is an electronic mailing list
server developed by Eric Thomas for BITNET in 1986. These lists are technical approaches intended
to support discussion and deliberation in new ways, breaking down physical
barriers and erasing time and place as necessary elements in facilitating
meetings. So there are artificial
aspects to what these discussion groups experience, some of which encourage odd
behavior online and the posting of frivolous messages. Whether the existence of such material
minimizes their value to the degree to where archivists ought not to be
interested in their preservation may be the essential question involved in such
a debate as has occurred with the archives listserv.
The
archives list is an informal discussion group, especially since it is populated
primarily by working practitioners using it for a variety of practical and
personal reasons. This
list is a window into the informal chatter of a fairly diverse group of
archivists, a group that is probably as representative as one could get of the
American archival profession suggesting why it deserves to be saved in some
form. There is something particularly interesting about such informal or almost
accidental glimpses into the working nature of a profession. Archivists and the users of archival
documents prize the truly spontaneous letter, personal diary entries, and
scribbled notes on an important speech. Listservs are most prone to have these
kinds of informal discourse, so why shouldn’t they be saved?
The
Archives & Archivists list is but part of the rapid growth of such lists
across disciplines and society. In the
twenty years of LISTSERV lists, the growth has been phenomenal. In May 1986, there were 41 public listservs
and in a year and a half after that the number had grown to 1000, expanding by
1991 to over 3,000 discussion groups and other electronic communities in
operation. Most professionals, like archivists today, now face nearly unlimited
choices for joining highly specialized discussion groups and most are probably
members of at least half a dozen.
The
listserv technology gives us a chance to document early Internet use and the
development of online communities. We also ought to reflect on just what else
archivists might possess, that is worth preserving, that is similar or superior
to the Archives listserv archives. If
nothing else, one mightt archivists would take the lead both in documenting
these listservs and their own professional community’s use of them. This seems not to be the case.
Discussion
groups, such as represented by listservs, developed quickly because they
enabled groups with common interests and objectives to work together quickly
and effectively, allowing the sharing of ideas, collaboration, and the
searching and retrieving of information from the postings. Among information
professionals, the advantages of listservs seem obvious. It is no surprise,
then, that archivists took so quickly to their listservs; many archivists work
in one-person archives and in remote locations.
The listserv provided the opportunity to link people together, creating
a new sense of community. Even a frivolous thread of discussion can bind
together particular groups of individuals.
Is this any different than the groups at professional archival
conferences who annually come together to go to baseball games or to indulge in
golf matches? The only difference seems
to be that the online variations are captured online; all of these are
emblematic of work done among archivists.
The
virtual community that has emerged in the past thirty years has generated a
wide range of new legal and other issues, such as flaming, violations of
intellectual property, incursions into personal privacy, and sexual harassment. It is probably in this arena that SAA
leadership expressed most of its reasons for concern about the online archives,
especially as one individual apparently had requested the removal of many of
his or her postings. SAA, like the
majority of professional associations, fear litigation of any kind because of
its relatively meager financial resources, small professional staffs, and thin
voluntary labor pools.
Another
way of seeing the challenges of administering listservs is that they reflect
the range of normal group behavior that we see in society, with new challenges
presented by the virtual environment. In other words, some of the quirkiness of
the Archives & Archivists listserv may be the result of the technological
limitations in communication, a trait to be accounted for rather than factored
against the listserv when considering its overall value. Nevertheless, the nature of these
communications need to be evaluated against whether there are other sources
capturing a wide range of opinions from working archivists who tend not to express
their thoughts, in documented venues, such as through publishing, presenting
conference papers, or maintaining blogs and personal web sites.
Many
observers of, participants in, and critics of virtual communities, such as
represented by listservs, worry about a variety of legal issues – and they
should since the development of the technologies supporting such groups has
consistently outpaced the courts in the establishment of legal guidelines and
precedents. However, such issues are no
different for archivists or records managers dealing with earlier shifts in
recording technologies; new legal and administrative concerns emerge with every
generation of analog and digital technologies.
Are these concerns so complex or disruptive that they should lead to
wholesale destruction of digital recordkeeping systems?
Such
legal, ethical, and just plain commonsense issues extend from the nature of the
ease of use of electronic mail, what makes it possible for listservs to exist
and function as they do. Because posters on listservs often post out of anger
or frustration, these virtual communities can be valuable forums for learning
about the attitudes and feelings of working professionals. From an educational perspective, I like my
students to see these outbursts, partly because they can be insightful when
discussed in a classroom and partly because they suggest that archivists and
other records professionals feel passionate about their work. While such behavior may seem to undermine the
value of the content of a list such as that of the Archives & Archivists
one, it ought to be seen as adding valuable information to the attitudes,
trends, and opinions at work in the archival community.
The
reaction to the SAA leadership decision to jettison the online listserv
archives was swift and nearly uniform in its criticism. The tenor of the criticism about the decision
shifted from the mechanics of the decision to expressions that this decision
reflected a lack of interest in the full profession by the SAA leadership; some
posters even suggested that this decision reflected an interest in controlling
or censoring the profession (reflecting how strongly feelings ran about this
issue). This theme emerged with a vengeance
when it became evident that the incoming president of SAA, the individual
identified as being the officer to whom to send expressions of concern, was not
monitoring the discussion on the Archives & Archivists listserv
itself.
Many
posters decried the appraisal decision. Some of the problem from the outset was
the limited information being provided by the SAA leadership about its
decision. Many messages appeared about
the utility of the listserv archives. Many of the posters took exception to the
tone of the SAA appraisal decision that this listserv archives was not an
effective documentary source of the SAA itself.
From
the first full day of discussion on March 14 to the last lingering message on
March 30, there were sixty different participants in the debate. Only eleven posted two or more messages in
the discussion. These individuals ranged from seasoned veterans to students
preparing for careers. They came from
seventeen different states and three countries.
And those working as archivists were employed in museums, universities,
corporations, medical institutions, local governments, historical societies,
public libraries, religious archives, and the federal government. There were several self-employed consultants
also participating. Based on my own more
than thirty years of experience, I am hard-pressed to find any archival
professional forum reflecting such broad-based conversation.
Despite
the legal, administrative, and other problems with the listserv archives, a
number of individuals offered their institutions as hosts for the listserv and
its archives. Some posters suggested that if we let the financial implications
of litigation and other challenges dictate how we approach appraisal, then the
archival community faces other even more serious issues. Other posters suggested that the owners
and administrators of listservs and other such virtual discussion venues are
generally immune from the threat of litigation, and that this fear of
litigation was an unnecessary fear.
There also were observers who
expressed sympathy to SAA because of the difficulty in making this appraisal
decision, but this was a clear minority of those posting messages. A few comments were made about the fact that
SAA never intended this list to be a reflection of its own activities,
suggesting that any legal, administrative, or legal problems ought to be seen
in that light.
The Debate Broadens
Concerned
that I had not heard much from archival educators who I was sure had students,
like mine, using the listserv archives, I posted a message to the archival
educators list. My message was posted
after the announcement that SAA had rescinded its decision to destroy this
electronic archives. I was especially interested in sending this message to
archival educators because although they carry an important responsibility to
develop and advance the knowledge foundation for archival practice and for
preparing the next generation of archival practitioners. I focused on the yet unreleased “appraisal
report,” suggesting that only it would confirm that this was really just an
appraisal decision, or if it was about other matters that ought to raise
questions about the substance of the appraisal process.
Meanwhile,
on the listserv itself, the conversation about the SAA decision continued, with
various proposals introduced and various opinions about these proposals
offered. The idea of making the listserv
a moderated forum, so as to generate higher quality content in a more
consistent fashion, emerged as one topic. More discussion also developed about
the problem of individuals wanting to remove posts they submitted, mostly with
individuals wondering why someone might want messages they broadcast publicly
years later to be removed, for whatever reasons they might articulate.
Others
opened up the question of the ownership of the listserv. SAA was questioning its own right to the
messages posted on the listserv, but it was also making a decision to dispose
of the listserv archives. Others were perturbed that the SAA leadership was not
even engaging in debate with the participants in the listserv, suggesting that
it simply did not value the archives at all as a useful source of professional
dialogue, or this element of the archival community.
There was also discussion about just how well SAA was doing
in administering the Archives & Archivists listserv anyway. A segment of
this discussion was criticism of SAA’s references to an appraisal report,
research papers, and other materials used in the appraisal decision – although
none of this material was being shared or even very effectively
summarized. Some also commented on how good appraisal must take into account
the needs of the records creators or a particular community utilizing the
records, suggesting that the unfolding discussion on the archives listserv clearly
indicated that this group wanted its archives preserved and maintained in a
usable fashion. The debate also spilled onto other listservs and blogs,
suggesting the public nature of the debate. Sympathy and advice abounded in
these other sources, but it was all built on a firm foundation of criticism for
the SAA decision.
A Public Relations
Disaster
Apart from all the appraisal and
practical issues associated with this case, there is the matter of what SAA
leadership thought it was doing when it announced its decision to destroy the
online archives. Some posters eloquently shared comments about how they could
not afford to go to SAA meetings, and that the Archives & Archivists
listserv was the closest they could come to a professional community. The decision by the SAA leadership to destroy
the listserv was feeding general negatives some held about the responsiveness
and relevance of SAA to them.
A number of
messages appeared suggesting how contrary SAA’s actions on the listserv
archives seems when one considers the other activities or stated priorities of
the association. Comments were made
about how SAA’s various stances on government transparency ought to carry over
to transparency within its own ranks. Although
there was little actually stated by SAA leadership about the digital nature of
the listserv archives having anything to do with its ultimate appraisal
decision, many of the listserv posters interpreted this to be an indication of
the inability of the main archival association to solve a technical issue. I
don’t think this was viewed as a technical issue of electronic records
management. Nevertheless, it clearly
broadcast to the world that this is what it might be about.
Such comments are, of course,
legitimate, especially when considered as part of a major public relations
snafu. Couldn’t anyone at the top of SAA
see that this interpretation might occur or understand that this sent a poor
message at best? Perhaps other factors
intruded, clouding the ability of SAA to comprehend all of the potential
fallout. There also seems to be evidence
that the SAA leadership, responding to a request by its university host that it
no longer wanted to be its host, knew of this situation for nearly a year
before springing onto the listserv community itself the news that it was going
to dump the archives in a few weeks.
Some
posters searched the listserv’s archives, perhaps in a last use of it before
its demise, to build a case against the SAA decision, pointing out, for
example, how the list’s founder, John Harlan, turned it over to SAA just a
decade before because of his confidence about “SAA's commitment to maintain the
Archives & Archivists LISTSERV list as the open forum of international
professional communication and discourse that it has always been intended to
be,” and its “commitment to the continued diversity of the list, and to the
list's role in serving the entire archival profession, not just the SAA
membership or American archivists.” Obviously, things had changed in just a
decade.
Another
indicator of the public relations problems generated by this debate were the
reactions of students. Students
represent, after all, both the future practicing archivists and the dues paying
members of the SAA itself. SAA has
generally valued these members, authorizing the establishment of SAA student
chapters at various schools and offering memberships at reduced rates in order
to attract these students into their fold.
One wonders, therefore, just whether much thought or commonsense was
given to the impact on this element of the association membership, especially
since this demographically younger group is generally more comfortable with
online activity (having grown up with it).
Within a few days into the debate SAA
President Elizabeth Adkins posted a message seeking to reassure listserv
members that their voices were being heard, suggesting that the association’s
governing council was planning to reconsider its “appraisal” decision and,
perhaps, release the appraisal report that had been referenced in the original
posting. Some posters, reflecting on her message, argued that SAA needs to
rethink the listserv as not being part of its official records, mostly because,
in their opinion, this association is supposed to represent the entire archival
community. This issue of the
relationship of the SAA membership to the American archival community seems to
be one of the main issues in the debate.
Individuals expressed a variety of
other opinions, mostly minor although still interesting points, as the
discussion began to wane. There was some
reflection about why SAA might be reacting to a demand by one or more
individuals (this matter was never completely clarified) to remove messages,
why others could not demand that their messages be maintained, and whether SAA
really did not have the authority to remove them. Was this an appraisal decision or a fear of
litigation? Functioning in such a manner suggests all kinds of difficulties,
not only in archival appraisal but in all archival functions; for example,
would SAA cave in to seek to remove older articles from its print and online
publications? While this possibility
might seem ridiculous, where does one draw the line about such requests or with
litigation threats?
Five days after Adkins first
conciliatory message, she posted another to the listserv indicating that the
SAA leadership was responding to the comments made by various individuals about
the decision to dump the list’s archives.
She reported that the SAA Council rescinded its intent to
destroy the archives and were exploring transferring it to another institution.
The question lingering is, however, whether much of this decision or subsequent
debate had much to do with archival appraisal.
After more than two weeks of debate and discussion
on the Archives & Archivists listserv, SAA President Elizabeth Adkins
released the frequently referred to but as of until then unseen appraisal
report on the listserv archives. Adkins indicated that it had taken this long
for SAA leadership to decide about the release of the report for "two
reasons," that individuals were named who did not authorize the release of
their names and that it was an internal document for SAA leadership’s use.
Adkins argued that since SAA is an advocate for transparency, it was releasing
the report.
The report, as it turns out, was
nearly anticlimactic after the many days of discussion on the listserv,
indicating that there was a division in opinion about whether there was any
worth to maintaining the list archives, with particular comments on the matter
of off-topic postings, postings of an ephemeral nature, questions about whether
the unmoderated or unmanaged nature of the listserv undermined its value, and
legal issues regarding the intellectual property of the messages,
One
of the disturbing aspects that materialized in reading the report is the degree
to which the question about the management of the listserv affects the quality
of the information represented in its messages, complaining that the listserv
”has not been managed as a record.” This seems odd. Archivists regularly acquire records that
have not been particularly well managed.
Indeed, some would argue, as I certainly would, that the better
documentary sources are often those created with no eye on preservation, where
people state views and opinions freely and candidly. It seems as if the
discussion about the listserv archives wanted this to be more like the American Archivist, a peer-reviewed
journal, but no one could ever argue that such a journal could represent the
broad range of views making up the archival community.
Releasing
the report did clarify some issues.
There were only two individuals requesting messages to be removed,
although one had asked for over five hundred messages to be deleted from the
list archives (prompting Miami University of Ohio to request SAA to take
responsibility for the online list archives, leading to the task force, this
report, and the initial decision by SAA to dump the archives). The report
reflected that the main emphasis related to financial, legal, technical, and
administrative matters – rather than any sense of a mission by SAA to be
responsible for documenting the archival community. And here we may have the
crux of the divide between the SAA leadership and the listserv community, the
former truncating its mission in a manner that seems peculiar in light of
initiatives like the major census of the profession and the latter seeing the
association as representing the profession not just the membership.
Releasing
the report also possibly confused some issues, mostly about whether this was
really an appraisal report. It is informally written and a bit confusing to
follow. None of the reasons presented
for not wanting to maintain the list archives are represented in enough detail
to merit making a penultimate decision to destroy the archives, nor is any real
consensus reflected.
20/20 Hindsight?
In the March/April 2007 issue of SAA’s newsletter there is the regular column of the association’s executive director. Entitled “The Way Things Go,” Nancy Beaumont tries to bring closure for one of the more difficult episodes she has faced in her work with SAA. In the column, one can sense the frustration and weariness of Director Beaumont. In reviewing the debate about whether the archives of the Archives and Archivists listserv should be retained, she makes three points. First, she tries to suggest that the debate reflects why professional associations are important, enabling discussion about professional issues. Second, she sees that the debate merely reveals that appraisal is difficult and archivists disagree about such decisions. Third, she laments how much valuable time was consumed by this debate, leading her to worry about how SAA’s various contributions to the profession might be lost or glossed over because of the internecine squabbling about the listserv.
Such comments miss the point, about SAA’s responsibility for being accountable to the profession, how such activities fit within its own mission statement, and even about how it manages its own records (lacking any public statement how it appraises its other records. SAA needs to be an open organization, and my fear is that the damage done to its public image in this recent discussion is severe, supporting what many have criticized as its elitism and disconnection from the archival community.
The
need to be more open about appraisal decisions is due to the need of
establishing some degree of accountability for the archival profession and to
seek to provide a better understanding by the public, policymakers, resource
allocators or funders of archives, and researchers or users of archival
materials. This suggests, of course, a
better designed and more formal appraisal report than what emerged in this
case. The wavering disagreement among SAA leadership about this appraisal
decision suggests a deeper problem than merely that archivists can disagree
about the particulars of appraisal or its application.
The SAA leadership’s disregard of the archives community represented by the listserv can be interpreted in many ways, ranging from simple shortsightedness to overt callousness. Somewhere in all this is an ethical dimension. A number of posters delivered very negative assessments of SAA’s behavior. While no one wants to accuse the SAA leadership of unethical behavior, and I am not, its activities regarding the listserv archives were certainly poorly timed and carried out.
The substance of the debate on the Archives & Archivists listserv about the threat to its own archives countered the notion that the SAA leadership offered that there was little worth saving in these digital communications. In fact, the mass of messages provided many insights into the archival community, how it saw itself, appraisal issues, electronic records management concerns, and, yes, the notion of professional leadership. One could argue, that the SAA has an ethical responsibility to maintain the listserv archives. One might also question the wisdom of SAA passing the listserv and its archives off to another host. This can be seen as an abrogation of professional responsibility, to state the obvious, even though many posters, in frustration, urged some other institution to take the listserv as a means for preserving the archives. This seems especially to be the case since the membership of the archives listserv rivals the membership of the SAA itself, and only with partial overlap. What appears certain, when considering everything concerning this debate, is that it was not merely a disagreement about appraisal or a lack of ease with digital documentation but just as much about professional vision, mission, and leadership; the debate was a means for remembering that in carrying out appraisal or seeking to maintain digital information and evidence many other factors intrude.
A
generation ago David Gracy speculated that archivists can have their identities
formed by what they keep, but, judging by this case study, their identities
also can be shaped by what they do not
keep. Gracy, in urging his compatriots
to work to inform society about the importance of archives, reflected, “one of
the most fundamental, recurring, and easily seen messages of and lessons in
history is that where one is not moving forward, one is moving backward.” It
seems that in the decision to destroy the listserv archives we have taken a
step backward, suggesting to the world that archivists do not care for their
own professional memory, community, appraisal accountability, or the digital
heritage. None of this was anyone’s
intentions, but this was a sad and disturbing episode in the history of the
Society of American Archivists. Even
later announcements made about the commitment to maintain the list and its
archives and to open up the deliberations of various SAA groups cannot erase
the poor judgment shown by this association.
All we can hope is that we learn from it.