The first Executive Order that dealt specifically with national-security information appeared in the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt; with the rise of the “Red Scare” in the fifties and early sixties, others followed, incrementally broadening the authority of government agencies to classify more and more information. There was no serious attempt to overhaul the system until the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, in the wake of the Watergate affair and the public mistrust of government it had fostered.
The ink was barely dry on Carter’s Order before Ronald Reagan took office, and his administration moved to reverse the trend toward greater access to government information. E.O. 12356 gave tremendous discretion to agencies for the classification of their records, more than any previous Order. President Bush did nothing to change the situation he inherited from President Reagan. Upon assuming office, President Clinton ordered a thorough review of the security-classification system, and three years into his first term, he signed the Order under which the government currently operates.
Side-by-side examination of the three pertinent Orders from the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations reveals some striking differences in the following areas: the definition of terms used, time limitations on the classification of records, and clues as to whether the administration responsible for each Order was unconsciously encouraging overclassification. Carter’s Order had somewhat stricter criteria for deciding whether a document should be classified than did Reagan’s; Clinton’s definition sticks closer to Reagan’s than Carter’s, but with an important addition requiring that the classifying authority be able to articulate why the record should be classified. This can be seen as an attempt to discourage the automatic classification of much material that may not necessarily need it. Also, the Carter and Clinton Orders mandate classification at the lowest of three levels (Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret), while the Reagan Order goes in the exact opposite direction: “When in doubt, classify, and when in doubt about which level, classify at the highest.”
As for timetables dealing with the automatic declassification of information, both the Carter and Clinton Orders address this. Carter speaks of mandatory automatic declassification after a record is twenty years old, unless review determines that the information is still sensitive, while Clinton shortens that period to ten years. There is, not surprisingly, no provision in the Reagan Order for automatic declassification at all. In an effort to clear up the staggering backlog of classified records, the Clinton Order also requires that all records over the age of twenty-five years as of April 17, 2000 be automatically declassified, whether they have been reviewed or not.
One of the most revolutionary changes in E.O. 12958 is the abolition
of marking all classified documents “OADR” (Originating Authority’s Determination
Required). Reagan’s Order had mandated that, in order for a record
to be declassified, the same channels that had approved it classification
would have to approve its declassification. This process had proved
practically impossible to operate, since many records were classified through
interagency channels, and the various branches of the government had neither
the time nor the money nor the personnel to devote to collaborative declassification
duty. Indeed, it was in part because of the backlog created by OADR
that the Clinton administration decided upon the necessity of revamping
the security-classification process.
Having received this mandate to declassify in bulk, the Department
of Defense set about drawing up plans to comply with it. Each of
the three main agencies in DoD—the Army, the Navy (including the Marine
Corps), and the Air Force—would be responsible for its own activity, with
efforts overseen by the Assistant Secretary for Defense (Command, Control,
Communications, and Intelligence). The general outline was
for each agency to concentrate on a scheme of declassifying 15% of its
targeted records yearly until the review was complete. Records would
fall into one of three categories, adopted from NARA guidelines, for sensitivity
of their information: Category I, records replete with sensitive materials,
Category II, records with moderate amounts of sensitive materials, and
Category III, those records with little sensitive information.
Reviewers could train and work on the Category III records at first,
gaining experience and confidence as they progressed up the mountain of
classified materials.
Department of the Army decision-makers decided to adopt these guidelines with very little adjustment. Like the other branches of service, DA found that it lacked enough sufficiently trained personnel to carry out the declassification requirements of E.O. 12958, and the adoption of the 15/15/15/15/15+ model, using the Category I, II, III designations may be seen as a pragmatic approach to dealing with this problem. The initial response of the Department of the Navy, on its face, was similar to DA’s. A closer examination of its self-assessment, however, reveals a much more chaotic situation: since many sub-agencies within the Navy had been in the habit of devising and using their own records-management schemes, it was impossible for the agency even to state with any confidence just how many classified documents it would have to deal with. The most comical, and most alarming, assessment of the state of formalized records management within DoD can be found in the Navy’s report to ASD/C3I: “Previous editions of [the Navy’s instruction for setting up and maintaining file series] and its predecessors provided for alpha-numeric filing codes. Files being reviewed [in accordance with E.O. 12958] can be identified and structured according to these instructions. Consequently, in some cases other coding identifiers and filing arrangements will be observed, including some that defy explanation” (my emphasis). By the end of March 1997, when this paper was written, it appeared that the Navy was still in an assessment mode rather than an action stance in regards to compliance with the Order.
The Air Force took a radically different approach to compliance. Policy-makers there adopted a 20/20/20/20/20 plan, whereby 20% of their documents would be reviewed yearly, and they directed their reviewers to concentrate on the more difficult Category III records first, perhaps with the idea that, having dealt with the hard materials first, they would be able to race through the less problematic records as the April, 2000 deadline approached. In addition, they came up with a plan to circumvent the problem all three agencies complained of: lack of trained personnel to carry out the work. The Air Force decided to make use of Reserve-component personnel, rather than rely on active-duty members of service and civilian personnel.
With these general guidelines in place, the work of reviewing was ready to begin. There still remained a number of major obstacles, however, and among these was the mindset of the reviewers. Having been in the business of keeping secrets for so long, there is evidence that at least some of them, especially the career bureaucrats (as opposed to political appointees), might have difficulty in making a 180-degree turn in their thinking. There must be a major shift from the risk-avoidance mentality of the Reagan era, when the unspoken motto was, “When in doubt, classify,” to a more realistic approach of risk management. Another area of concern was the allowance in the Order for the exemption of entire file series from review. It is not inconceivable that reviewers might request exemption for those file series that contain materials of greatest interest to historians and the public, as well as those with information that might be most embarrassing to agencies or Presidential administrations.
There was also the issue of interagency cooperation. Documents held by one agency may have been created using information collected by another agency throughout the entire government, and before any declassification determination can be made by the holding agency, the other agencies who have an equity stake in the record must be consulted. With dwindling resources and personnel, agencies have been understandably reluctant to commit them to such activities, which many of them view as non-essential. In January, 1996, however, an interagency group called the External Referral Working Group was set up to deal with this issue. Its mission is to facilitate the implementation of E.O. 12958 through coordination of effort, communication among declassifiers, and the development of uniform procedures and tools for the entire government. One of their pilot programs is the development of a common lexicon and a uniform marking system; they are also piloting a Remote Archive Capture program at the Presidential Libraries, whereby reviewers will be able to examine records held at the Libraries in which they have an equity, without having to spend the money and time to travel there.
Finally, it has been recognized that until now there has been no basic understanding in the Federal government of the concept of records management and the life cycles of documents. In this vacuum, personnel just classified the records and shoved them in filing cabinets, metaphorically speaking, and had very little to do with other agencies that were engaging in the same behavior. This explains in part how the enormous backlog of classified records, like Topsy, just “growed and growed.” Controlling authorities saw only their own piece of the picture, until they were forced to step back and assess the whole situation, and could understand the importance of thinking about their records as having a life cycle.
In March, 1997 a Senatorial commission released a report that reviewed initial compliance with E.O. 12958. Its assessment was that, while much had been accomplished, even more remained to be done, and one of the major stumbling blocks, aside from all the questions of logistics, was the willingness of some personnel to comply not only with the letter of the Order, but also, and more importantly, with its spirit. It is vital that these workers come to adopt a strategy of risk management, as well as a concept of records management, for the information they handle. There are some indications that this is happening more slowly than anticipated, but the realization that it must occur is taking hold. Truly, all secrets are not equal, and some secrets are not worthy of being kept for as long as they have. Executive Order 12958 has brought this point home, and the Armed Forces, along with other government agencies, must comply with its directive to release information to the American public in a more timely and responsible manner.
Persons interested in reading this paper in its entirety may request it through interlibrary loan; it is held in the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A bibliography has been, or soon will be, mounted on SNCA’s home page on the World Wide Web. The author is grateful to SNCA for having chosen the paper to be the first recipient of the Gene A. Williams Award; although I never met Mr. Williams, I feel I know him, through the many fond memories so many of you have shared with me.
To make regional caucuses work, we would need people willing to serve as caucus chairs or at least to organize and arrange gatherings. In addition, we would need archivists willing to spend the time attending such gatherings. Meetings could be anything from lunch or dinner chat sessions to tours of facilities. From my experience with state caucuses in MARAC, I know that they can be a great way to build local networks, and they can also be a source of great frustration (when no one shows up).
Is there enough need and interest for the SNCA board to work on ways to provide structure and perhaps funding for regional groups? The answer can come only from individual members. If you are attending the Spring Meeting, there will be plenty of opportunities to talk to board members about it. Or you can post a note to the listserv: "snca-l@listserv.ncsu.edu" or contact me via an e-mail, phone call, or postcard.
Volunteers
Thanks to all who have volunteered. And if you planned to but
just didn't quite get around to it (I know--my last newsletter article
is in the to-do pile and as soon as you get a few things cleared off your
desk, you are going to call), at the Spring Meeting there will be sign-up
sheets and information (and maybe even prizes). My committees aren't full
yet and I am serious about recruiting! If you're not attending the
meeting, dig out that last newsletter and give us a call. If you are new
since the last newsletter, you are not too new to be a committee member.
Just contact me at jablodgett@davidson.edu or 704/892-2632 or P.O. Box
1837, Davidson, NC 28036.
| Society of North Carolina Archivists Home Page | http://www.RTPnet.org/snca |
| Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities home page | http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/home.html |
| Archival Finding Aids for collections, Duke University | http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/findaids/ |
| EAD at Duke University | http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/findaid/ead/ |
| EAD at NCSU Libraries Special Collections | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/libraries/archives/ead.html |
| Documenting The American South | http://sunsite.unc.edu/docsouth/index.html |
| Encoded Archival Description (EAD) at the University of Virginia Library | http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/ead/ |
| The SGML Web Page | http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html |
| EAD Home Page | http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ead/eadhome.html |
Sgml/Html:
| EAD Application Guidelines | http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/people/tom/guidelines/ |
| Digital Finding Aids Project | http://hul.harvard.edu/dfap/ |
| SoftQuad: Panorama PRO | http://www.sq.com/products/panorama/panor-fe.htm |
| The Multidoc Pro family of SGML browsers | http://www.citec.fi/mdp/index.html |
| SGML/HTML Resource Centre | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2694/sgml.html |
| Text Encoding Initiative Home Page | http://www.uic.edu:80/orgs/tei/ |
| Dublin Core Metadata Element Set- Resource Page | http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core/ |
| A Beginner's Guide to Perl: Introduction | http://www.bluemarble.net/~scotty/Perl/intro.html |
| Image Projects | http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/image_projects.html |
| Design Elements for Great Web Pages | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/design/index.html |
| EAD homepage | http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ead/eadhome.html |
| The Harvard/Radcliffe Digital Finding Aids Project | http://hul.harvard.edu/dfap/ |
| Cornell University Archives On-line Finding Aids | http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/Division-Info/rmc-coll/rmc-coll.html |
| University of Michigan EAD Interface | http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~blandis/EAD/ |
| University of Vermont's Collection Inventories | http://sageunix.uvm.edu/~sc/findaids/index.html |
| Welcome to Durham University Library's DynaWeb Server | http://flambard.dur.ac.uk:6336/ |
The office has a dual role, contributing to both University administration and to the instructional program. As a part of the administration, the Archives assists other offices by providing information for policy development, fund raising, public relations, legal affairs and a host of other activities. The staff works closely with the Offices of the President, Provost, and Secretary, Public Relations, Alumni Affairs and Development, the Counsel, and student life, among others.
The Archives contributes to the University's instructional program by providing material for research in a wide variety of topics, in addition to Duke's history. Among the research strengths are religion and education in the South, the history of academic disciplines, athletics, psychology, physics, and economics. Staff members regularly give presentations to classes; recent requests have come from history, engineering, public policy, and the University Writing Program.
The Archives serves constituencies in addition to Duke students, staff, faculty, and alumni. Reporters, filmmakers, personnel from other institutions, writers, genealogists, and townspeople all make use of the records.
The holdings consist of about 7000 linear feet of administrative, legal, and fiscal records, reports, correspondence, and other documents that tell the story of this institution from its founding in 1838 up to the present. Annual accessions average about 225 linear feet, which is just a bit more than the height of the Duke Chapel's tower. In addition to official records, the Archives receives campus publications, senior honors theses, videos and photographs, personal papers of selected faculty members, and the records of student and employee organizations.
Staff:
William E. King, University Archivist weking@mail01.adm.duke.edu
Thomas Harkins, Associate Archivist thark@mail01.adm.duke.edu
Todd Crumley, Assistant Archivist tcrum@mail01.adm.duke.edu
Carol Walter, Staff Assistant cwal@mail01.adm.duke.edu
Location: Room 341 Perkins Library, on Duke's West campus
Hours: 8am-5pm, Monday through Friday.
Mail: Duke University Archives, Box 90202, Durham, NC 27708-0202
Telephone: (919) 684-5637 Fax 919-684-2855
Office e-mail: archives@acpub.duke.edu
Website: http://www.duke.edu/web/Archives/
Editor’s note: The program for the Spring Meeting includes
a tour of the Duke University Archives.
If anyone needed a lesson in how “dusty” (or not so dusty) old files
can have an impact on what is known as “real life”, Timothy Garton Ash’s
The File can easily provide it. A professor at Oxford University, Ash has
written a number of prize-winning books on modern European history, particularly
on the last decade or so and the breakup of the former Soviet empire. The
File, however, is a unique blend of personal memoir and a primary source
of a kind most of us rarely get to see: the file of the former East German
Secret Police (Stasi) kept on Ash himself during his days as a graduate
student in East Germany during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Combining
this file with his memory and with a diary he kept at the time, Ash gives
us a very different perspective on the nature of time, memory, bureaucracy,
the document, and the “record”, as he reconstructs his life as a graduate
student and his memories of acquaintances, friends, lovers, and professors.
For Ash and to a much greater extent for many ordinary East Germans, to
whom in the new Germany all these files (111 miles of them, or over 586,000
linear feet or around 1.4 billion documents---maintained at a cost of $164
million per year, a sum greater than that spent on defense in Lithuania)
have been thrown open (with some minimal control over revealing the names
of “innocent third parties”), the questions of who was informing on whom
and when and why, opened the door to ambiguous, painful, and even tragic
consequences. Not wishing to reveal the “end
of the mystery”---in the form of Ash’s last discovery on this quest---I
will still say that he manages to raise an “intriguing” question regarding
the nature of official secrecy on this side of the former Iron Curtain.
I highly recommend this book as one of the present few which address,
in a reflective and analytical way (yet still worn lightly), the integral
part the record and the document have played in the lives of a substantial
number of our contemporaries in Europe.
Model Guidelines for Electronic Records
http://www.lib.de.us/archives/g-lines.htm
A draft of thirteen guidelines for government agencies creating and
maintaining electronic records systems developed by the Delaware Public
Archives and the Delaware Project. Each guideline includes a description,
supporting laws and literature, and recommended activities for agencies
to complete in support of the guideline. See also http://www.del-aware.lib.de.us/archives/del-proj.htm
for further description of the Delaware Project on managing electronic
records.
General Background Working Papers and Findings -- CERAR
http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~cerar/ppr-find.htm
Background materials for a 1997 working meeting held by the Center
for Electronic Recordkeeping and Archival Research (University of Pittsburgh).
A useful list of over 50 current articles and policies on managing electronic
records with links to almost all of them. Articles are not all in the same
format, however, and some can not be directly downloaded when using Netscape.
Fortunately, the site includes instructions on how to convert the files
to a readable format.
For a list of and links to many other sites dealing with electronic
records (and other archives and records management issues), visit http://www.nagara.org/
Thanks to Ed Southern for pointing me towards these sites. If you know
of any sites or subjects you would recommend exploring, please contact
me at todd.crumley@duke.edu or 919-684-5637 (w)
Lisa Long (formerly Wood) completed her MLS degree at Simmons University. She has been hired as an archivist for Brandeis University.
Sam Shine (State Archives) accepted an appointment to the Governor’s Committee on Safe Communities. The committee tackles issues surrounding community crime prevention, the war on drugs, juvenile crime, domestic violence, and justice system reform.
Luba Zakharov currently works in the records center of a law firm in Seattle, WA.
The Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, UNC-CH recently completed processing the Rice Ballard papers. Ballard (c. 1800-1860) was a slave trader based in Richmond, Va., who worked in partnership with the large slave trading firm of the Isaac Franklin and John Armfield in the late 1820’s and early 1830’s. By the early 1840’s, Ballard settled down as a planter with several plantations in the Mississippi Valley. The papers include letters, financial and legal materials, volumes, and other material documenting Rice Ballard’s life as a slave trader and planter. The collection contains over 5,000 items, most dating from the 1830-1860 period, and is one of the finest collections documenting plantation life in the Natchez region extant.
The North Carolina Baptist Historical Collection, Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University has microfilmed records of several North Carolina churches and religious associations, including: Spencer Baptist Church (1945-1996), Rowan County; Jackson Baptist Church (1881), Northampton County; West Chowan Baptist Association (1956-1996); Little Richmond Baptist Church (1872), Surry County; Surry Baptist Association (1942-1997); East Waynesville Baptist Church (1953-1995), Haywood County, Penelope Baptist Church (1960-1996), Catawaba County; Sawyer’s Creek Baptist Church (1815-1993), Camden County; Jersey Baptist Church (1955-1996), Davidson County; Dover Baptist Church (1974-1997), Cleveland County.
The UNC-CH Manuscript Department recently completed retrospective work on linking its MARC records to finding aids available at its web site. Users now can locate departmental holdings in the web version of the UNC-CH online catalog (http://unclib.lib.unc.edu:5725/htbin/webcat) and be transported to descriptions and other related materials on the Departments web site (http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/). Most materials in the Southern Historical Collection (SHC), General and Literary Manuscripts (G&LM), and the University Archives (UARS) are represented by records in the online catalog. There also are a few records representing materials in the Southern Folklife Collection. On the web site (http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/), there are currently finding aids for about 1,320 of the approximately 4,450 collections in the SHC and G&LM and about 140 of the 195 records groups in UARS. In January, linking fields (USMARC 856) were added to all of the MARC records for collections with finding aids on the web site. In the future, all new MARC records and web-based finding aids will be linked. MARC fields are also used to link records to special web-based materials that relate to specific collections. For examples of how this works, see the online catalog entry for the George Moses Horton poem or any of the entries for the records of J.M. Dent & Sons, which are linked to both finding aids and web exhibits.
On Friday, April 17, 1998, the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-CH will host an InfoToGo workshop from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Called “Enhancing Access and Adding Value to Information,” the workshop will explore new strategies for searches across databases, including vocabulary differences and links from databases to library holdings. Dr. Pauline Atherton Cochrane, Research Professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will lead participants in on-line exercises, examples, and small group discussions. For more information on this and other InfoToGo Workshops, see the SILS homepage at http://www.ils.unc.edu/ and click on “continuing education.”
Sue Ann Cody (UNC-Wilmington) wrote “Historical Museums on the World Wide Web: An Exploration and Critical Analysis” for the Fall 1997 issue of The Public Historian (Volume 19, Number 4).
Alice Cotten (North Carolina Collection) published Always Yours, Max: Maxwell Perkins Responds To Questions About Thomas Wolfe (Thomas Wolfe Society, 1997). This book is a collection of responses that noted Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins wrote to questions about Thomas Wolfe and his experiences as Wolfe’s first editor. Perkin’s original responses are in the Terry Series of the Thomas Wolfe Collection in the North Carolina Collection.
Si Harrington (State Archives) reviewed From Here to Mexico: With America’s Private Pilots in the Fight Against Nazi U-Boats by Louis E. Keefer for and upcoming issue of the North Carolina Historical Review.
Donna Kelly (Historical Publications Section) contributes “Selected Bibliography of Completed Theses and Dissertations Related to North Carolina Subjects” to the January 1998 issue of the North Carolina Historical Review. For the same issue she briefly reviewed In Care of Yellow River: The Complete Civil War Letters of Private Eli Pinson Landers to His Mother and Weep Not for Me, Dear Mother by Elizabeth W. Roberson.
David Olson (State Archives) wrote “Camp Pitt and the Continuing
Education of Government Archivists” for an upcoming issue of the American
Archivist. It should appear in a 1998 issue of the journal.
This conference will focus on various issues and problems facing institutions and individuals involved in preservation. Videotaped presentations from the first teleconference, “Remembering Who We Are: Preserving Our Documentary Heritage,” will be re-broadcast as part of the May 6 program. Presenters include: Don Etherington of ICI and Harlan Greene of NCPC, who will address some of the pressing preservation concerns facing archivists and records managers in our state; Karen Jefferson of Duke University, who will discuss the preservation of African-American documentary history; and David Moltke-Hansen of UNC-CH, who will examine archival standards and how to identify them. David Olson of the North Carolina State Archives will introduce and summarize segments. The second half of the May 6 teleconference will be a live panel discussion featuring the presenters who participated in the 1996 conference.
As for the first conference, there will be ten designated receive sites all across North Carolina at which interested individuals may interactively participate in the question and answer segment. These sites will most likely be at local community colleges. Also, anyone with C-band satellite reception may tune in the program.
Two more teleconferences--one dedicated to automation and electronic records, another dealing with access, security, and legal issues--will be broadcast over the course of the summer months.
The SHRAB’s teleconference series is part of its Local Records Educational Assistance Regrant Program, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Washington, D.C. The first year of the regrant component of this program ended in 1997. The SHRAB hopes to announce the second year of the regrant component in late March. All institutions on the SHRAB’s mailing list will be notified.
Institutions which intend to apply for a regrant under this program’s 1998-99 cycle must be represented at the May 6 conference. However, anyone with an interest in archives and archival preservation is invited to attend or tune in. There is no charge.
Information on summer teleconferences will appear in the next issue
of The North Carolina Archivist. For details on the May 6 conference,
a list of regional reception sites, or information on the SHRAB’s regrant
opportunities, contact Dr. Boyd Cathey at the State Archives, 109 East
Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27601; tel (919)733-3952; e-mail
bcathey@ncsl.dcr.state.nc.us
Questions? Concerns? Contributions? Please contact Sarah Koonts at the NC State Archives, 109 East Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27511; (919) 733-7691; or skoonts@ncsl.dcr.state.nc.us
Coming to the Spring Meeting? I’ll be working the crowd for future newsletter contributions. So, if you see me headed your way, practice the phrase, “Why, yes! I’d be happy to write an article for the newsletter.”