"The author rethinks the concept of the ethical archivist in the current era of profound change. She demonstrates how the daily decisions made by archivists connect to larger issues of social responsibility and the need to construct a balanced and accurate historic record. Danielson both analyzes real-life cases and poses theoretical questions to help working archivists better understand ethics as an applied practice"--p. [4] of cover.

The scope and reach of information, driven by the explosive growth of information technologies and content types, has expanded dramatically over the past 30 years. The consequences of these changes to records and information management (RIM) professionals are profound, necessitating not only specialized knowledge but added responsibilities. RIM professionals require a professional ethics to guide them in their daily practice and to form a basis for developing and implementing organizational policies, and Mooradian’s new book provides a rigorous outline of such an ethics. Taking an authoritative principles/rules based approach to the subject, this book comprehensively addresses the structure of ethics, outlining principles, moral rules, judgements, and exceptions;ethical reasoning, from meaning and logic to dilemmas and decision methods;the ethical core of RIM, discussing key topics such as organizational context, the positive value of accountability, conflicts of interest, and confidentiality;important ethical concerns like copyright and intellectual property, whistleblowing, information leaks, disclosure, and privacy; andthe relationship between RIM ethics and information governance. An essential handbook for information professionals who manage records, archives, data, and other content, this book is also an ideal teaching text for students of information ethics.

When the new HIPAA privacy rules regarding the release of health information took effect, medical historians suddenly faced a raft of new ethical and legal challenges—even in cases where their subjects had died years, or even a century, earlier. In Privacy and the Past, medical historian Susan C. Lawrence explores the impact of these new privacy rules, offering insight into what historians should do when they research, write about, and name real people in their work. Lawrence offers a wide-ranging and informative discussion of the many issues involved. She highlights the key points in research ethics that can affect historians, including their ethical obligations to their research subjects, both living and dead, and she reviews the range of federal laws that protect various kinds of information. The book discusses how the courts have dealt with privacy in contexts relevant to historians, including a case in which a historian was actually sued for a privacy violation. Lawrence also questions who gets to decide what is revealed and what is kept hidden in decades-old records, and she examines the privacy issues that archivists consider when acquiring records and allowing researchers to use them. She looks at how demands to maintain individual privacy both protect and erase the identities of people whose stories make up the historical record, discussing decisions that historians have made to conceal identities that they believed needed to be protected. Finally, she encourages historians to vigorously resist any expansion of regulatory language that extends privacy protections to the dead. Engagingly written and powerfully argued, Privacy and the Past is an important first step in preventing privacy regulations from affecting the historical record and the ways that historians write history.

Ethics codes define societal expectations for individual and institutional moral conduct and performance. This volume of fourty case studies considers nearly every facet of professional archival work--from appraisal and administration to reference and the work of archivists. It offers advice concerning how archivists resolve moral conflicts and the impact on the relationship to the public, the quality of archival work, and professional satisfaction.

Attorney and archivist Menzi Behrnd-Klodt details legal issues from acquisition to ownership, access, administration, and the effects of copyright and intellectual property law on archivists and archives. --from publisher description.