The ALL-SIS Archives in the Digital Age

Law librarians appreciate the value of archived materials. Frequently they are called upon to find the law or other documents from the past, whether for historic reasons or to provide information about an ongoing issue.

In the digital age, law librarians and archivists struggle to maintain archives of important materials. This is particularly true of documents that are born digital, such as email and web pages. Such materials present unique challenges that will only be overcome with consideration and care.

Over the past two years, the ALL-SIS Archives Committee has struggled to keep up-to-date material for the section in the archives housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Too often, we are so busy doing the work associated with the documents and materials that we lose sight of the importance of preserving them for our successors. It is important that all members of the section become familiar with the material which should be submitted to the archives for preservation.

As adopted in the 2004 - 2005 academic year, the current Archives Policy Statement is as follows:

The Archives of the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries ( ALL-SIS) includes material which illuminates much of the Section’s history. These non-current records, papers and publications are preserved because they contain information of administrative, legal, fiscal or research value. In order to perpetuate and augment our archival holdings, a policy must be established for collection of records from SIS officers and members. To this end, the following policies and guidelines are suggested:

1. All documentary materials, regardless of format or characteristics, which are received, created, or maintained by ALL-SIS officers, whether elected or appointed, in conducting business for the SIS are considered SIS records.
2. All material of enduring value, when no longer in current use by the officer to which it pertains, shall be transferred to the SIS archival collection. The SIS officers shall be the judge of which records are in sufficient current use to be retained, and will judge what, if any, restrictions should be placed on access to these records once the records are retired to the Archives.
3. The kinds of records which should be preserved in the Archives include, though this list should not be taken as all-inclusive:
1. SIS meeting minutes, all documents produced by the SIS and its members in the course of conducting its/their business, including but not limited to committee and task force reports and the like;
2. all publications of the SIS;
3. policy statements or statistical reports of any office;
4. correspondence relating to policy making;
5. letters of noted persons received in pursuit of SIS business;
6. member and officer biographies and related documents;
7. photographs and other memorabilia.
4. Because it is sometimes difficult for individuals to judge the value of records in their custody, no SIS records that appear to meet these requirements should be disposed of or destroyed.
5. Records in electronic format shall be transferred to print or microfilmed for preservation purposes.
6. Proper archival practice requires that records should be kept in the order in which those records were originated. To this end, groups of records should be retired periodically to the Archives, and individuals in the SIS should make an effort not to send individual items to the Archives in a piecemeal fashion if those individual items were actually part of a larger collection of materials.
7. The person in charge of the Archives will take suitable measures to preserve, arrange and describe the records of the SIS and shall provide information about them, copies of them, and/or the documents themselves as required for the business of the SIS or for research purposes. Preservation of records can include placing records in acid-free file folders and boxes, and taking any other necessary steps to prevent deterioration of the records over time.

The following individuals served on the Archives Committee during the past two years:

2005 - 2006:
Kathryn Hensiak Amato
Wendell Johnting
James Kelly
Mark Podvia, Chair
Ann Ribstein

2006 -2007:
Leanne Hillery (lhillery@regent.edu)
James Kelly, Chair (jpkelly@law.uiuc.edu)

The committee urges your comments and contributions. If you have any questions or have something you feel should be contributed to the archives in accordance with the above policy, please contact a member of the committee via email.