1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910967656903321

Titolo

Archives and the public good : accountability and records in modern society / / edited by Richard J. Cox and David A. Wallace

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Westport, Conn. : , : Praeger, , 2002

London : , : Bloomsbury Publishing, , 2024

ISBN

9798400614118

9786610913664

9781280913662

1280913665

9780313006722

0313006725

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (vi, 340 pages)

Altri autori (Persone)

CoxRichard J

WallaceDavid A. <1961->

Disciplina

027

Soggetti

Archives - Social aspects

Archives - Administration

Records - Management

Common good

Public interest

Responsibility

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Machine generated contents note: Explanation -- Archives on Trial: The Strange Case of the Martin Luther King, Jr, Papers -- James M. O'Toole -- "A Monumental Blunder": The Destruction of Records on Nazi War Criminals in Canada -- Terry Cook -- Information for Accountability Workshops: Their Role in Promoting Access to Information -- Kimberly Barata, Piers Cain, Dawn Routledge, andJustus Wamukoya -- Secrecy -- Implausible Deniability: The Politics of Documents in the Iran-Contra Affair and Its Investigations -- David A. Wallace -- The Failure of Federal Records Management: The IRS versus a Democratic Society -- Shelley Davis -- Lighting Up the Internet: The Brown and Williamson



Collection -- Robin L. Chandler and Susan Storch -- Memory -- The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Politics of Memory -- Tywanna Whorley -- Turning History into Justice: The National Archives and Records Administration and Holocaust-Era Assets, 1996-2001 -- Greg BradSher -- "They Should Have Destroyed More": The Destruction of Public Records by the South African State in the Final Years of Apartheid, 1990-1994 -- Verne Harris -- Trying to Write "Comprehensive and Accurate" History of the Foreign Relations of the United States: An Archival Perspective -- Anne Van Camp -- Trust -- What You Get Is Not What You See: Forgery and the Corruption of Recordkeeping Systems -- David B. Gracy II -- The Jamaican Financial Crisis: Accounting for the Collapse of Jamaica's Indigenous Commercial Banks -- Victoria L. Lemieux -- The Anchors of Community Trust and Academic Liberty: The Fabrikant Affair -- Barbara L. Craig -- Records and the Public Interest: The "Heiner Affair" in Queensland, Australia -- Chris Hurley.

Sommario/riassunto

This volume widens the perspective of the roles that records play in society. As opposed to most writings in the discipline of archives and records management which view records from cultural, historical, and economical efficiency dimensions, this volume highlights that one of the most salient features of records is the role they play as sources of accountability-a component that often brings them into daily headlines and into courtrooms. Struggles over control, access, preservation, destruction, authenticity, accuracy, and other issues demonstrate time and again that records are not mute observers and recordings of activity. Rather, they are frequently struggled over as objects of memory formation and erasure. The 14 powerful case studies focus around four closely related themes-explanation, secrecy, memory, and trust. They demonstrate how records compel, shape, distort, and recover social interactions across space and time. The diverse range of case studies includes the ownership of the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers, the destruction of records on Nazi war criminals in Canada, the politics of documents in the Iran-Contra affair, the failure of records management in the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the publication of tobacco company documents on the World Wide Web, access to records associated with the U.S. government's infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, the role of the U.S. National Archives in identifying assets looted by the Nazis in the wake of the Holocaust, the destruction of public records by the South African government during apartheid's final years, the construction of foreign relations of the U.S. documentary histories, the forgery corrupting recordkeeping systems, and the collapse of foreign indigenous commercial banks.