10 May 2014
Citations that involve living people must respect privacy. In our working notes, we record the name and contact information for each person we interview and each person who supplies information that is not publicly available. When we publish or circulate our material, for authenticity the minimal identifying information should be name, city, and state.
We should not publish or circulate personal data or personal contact information, either in print or online, without the authorization of our informants, so long as they are alive. After their deaths, the contact information becomes historical data that can be useful for research purposes.
Obviously, the privacy issue can also create a Catch-22 for historical researchers. If we are given information critical to making a case, for whatever issue we are pursuing, and we are not authorized to identify our informant or use a document provided by an informant, then we carry an additional burden: making a reliable case without that critical evidence. In these situations, out best solution is to use the restricted information as "clues" to create a comprehensive and reasonably exhaustive research plan and then leave no potentially useful record unexamined.
Extracted from EE's Chapter 2: "Fundamentals of Citation," which offers 50 pages of other tips on matters that all researchers wonder about.
It is interesting that
It is interesting that providing enough information (name, city and state) about an informant to identify him is a best practice in the US while it is 'not done' in the Netherlands. Here, privacy laws are very strict and it is considered rude, if not illegal, to publish information about another person that can be traced to an individual without their prior permission. Here, the best practice is to get permission even if you only want to refer to a source by their name and place of residence.
Yvette, I'm not sure I
Yvette, I'm not sure I understand the differences between your "best practices" there in the Netherlands and ours here. What you describe sounds the same as the first sentence of the second paragraph:
"We should not publish or circulate personal data or personal contact information, either in print or online, without the authorization of our informants, so long as they are alive."
Are you saying that this would not be permitted in the Netherlands even after death?
I was emailed
images of a will that I had been searching for for quite a long time. The researcher who shared the will with me asked me not to share the images, but said that I could share where the will was found. (The reason it had been so difficult to locate was that it had been filed as evidence in a civil case.) If I obtain my own copies of the original, and share them, how can I do this without offending the person who originally shared it with me? How do I prove that the images I publish were obtained by me?
P Pierce,
P Pierce,
That is certainly an interesting request. Documents filed in a civil case are a matter of public record. If you acquire a copy of the file from the clerk of court or from a state archives, there should be no restrictions on your right to share the image. (As an exception here: in some situations, when public records have been transferred to a university, the university may place conditions upon sharing.)
Is it possible, in this case, that your contact wanted to shelter the content of the will from public knowledge? Honoring that request would be difficult, indeed, given that research ethics frown on withholding pertinent evidence.
If you were to order the full file and share the full file, when requested, no one should fault you.
The will dates to 1815
The plaintiff in the civil case was the son of the decedent and was willed half of his father's land. He was just about a year old when his father was killed by a falling tree while clearing land. His mother remarried and with her new husband defrauded the child out of his inheritance. Since he was so young at his father's death, he knew nothing about the will until he was a grown man. He sued to get his inheritance restored to him.
I see nothing in this that would warrant nondisclosure. The person who sent me the scans of the will and court case is descended from the plantiff. This is a probable collateral line of mine. It's of interest to me because the will gives the name of the plantiff's brother, which is an important piece of evidence that points to my probable 5th great grandfather.
The only reason I was given for not sharing the scans was that the person who shared them was afraid it wouldn't be legal to share them.
p pierce, your last sentence
p pierce, your last sentence seems to hold the key to your dilemma: reassuring the person who shared the photocopies that the case is a matter of public record and that anyone can walk into the courthouse and request a copy.