I’m back in the US, almost back in Vermont. Got this little bizarre piece of news today: Society of American Archivists decides to nuke its listserv archives. Huh.
5 thoughts on “Society of American Archivists decides remove its own listserv archive”
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When this came across the listserv I was pretty stunned. I haven’t yet built up the momentum to write up my own blog post, but I did post a response on the listserv.
I’m worried that the mention of legal liability will cause an avalanche of all professional organizations taking this route. I use AUTOCAT and ARLIS-L archives on an almost daily basis. To zap the collective memory, especially of information professionals, is completely nonsensical to me.
I’m very disappointed. It’s ironic that SAA claims its mission is “to serve the educational and informational needs of more than 4,600 individual and institutional members,” yet so cavalierly tosses aside this valuable resource without consulting its membership first. When I was a young archivist, fresh out of grad school, the A&A list was more useful to me than anything that SAA offered. In fact, I’m not sure what SAA does, other than plan a fine annual meeting and occasionally publish a decent journal, to serve my “educational and informational needs†these days. It’s a question I’ll ask myself when I receive that SAA dues bill next year.
While it seems odd that archivists are getting rid of their archives, I think it speaks to their understanding that listserves are for transmitting information, and not for storage, etc.
For information that needs to be preserved for long-term educational use, I don’t think that email is the right medium.