Navigating Legal Issues in Archives

by Menzi L. Behrnd-Klodt

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. She begins with the legal framework behind policies and procedures and reviews the legal process and civil litigation, then details acquisition (including transfer of ownership and rights), appraisal, abandoned materials, tax consideration, risk, primacy, public records, records in information management, the implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, cultural property and their records, copyright and related rights issues (including permissions, releases, music, and moral rights) and the reasons why trademarks, patents, and related rights should matter to archivists. Includes sample legal documents and forms.

Genres: Professional Development, Nonfiction

329 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really valuable resource for my Master's capstone paper, about third-party privacy rights in private archival collections. It's also a really nice broad source for general legal issues in archives. Behrnd-Klodt is a really clear writer and she's very good at explaining legal guidelines in a way that the layperson can understand. Probably because of her background as both an archivist and a lawyer! Anyway, I bought this book after using a library copy, because I think it's a valuable addition to my professional library.

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I currently work at a Special Collections archive and am in the midst of processing a lawyer's collection, which mainly includes correspondence and legal files from the 1920s-1930s. As you can imagine, the archive wants to make information available to our patrons--but we definitely don't want to cross into any unknown territory when it comes to working with legal files. Luckily, there was indeed a chapter devoted to this kind of material in this book. (I also read through the rest of the book for fun, just in case some of this comes up later!).

As a whole, this should be on the shelf of every librarian and archivist (and anyone in library sciences, really) because there is some pertinent information here. It is important to know about legal ramifications you may come across if you violate a copyright, post some privileged information between a lawyer-client, etc. This does have several chapters dedicated to different questions/topics that you should be aware of.

The only critique: The book feels very "new" in the sense that it makes suggestions that may not be useful if you are processing/working with older materials. Remember when I said I was working with a collection from the 1920s-1930s? Well, this book suggests that lawyers typically stamp any privileged documents so that they clearly say "confidential" or the like. While this may be common practice today.... this wasn't always the practice (and maybe isn't for some lawyers even today). So sometimes there are "new" or "modern" ideas in here that may very well work in a lot of different examples, but just keep in mind not all archives are alike--there may be some further research needed at your particular institution.

Overall though, highly recommend this for those in archives and library sciences.

[Andrea Hickman Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely something I'm going to have to refer back to. It's a pity there's not a similar book for South Africa, but this is still useful!

[Javier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm now more confused.

[S. Mccloud]

Great text book and it has simple language