PORTRAITS IN A SMALL TOWN: BALANCING ACCESS AND PRIVACY WITH A LOCAL HISTORY PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION
John Helling
When you live in a small town, you get to know everyone. When you are the small town’s only portrait photographer, you get pictures of everyone. If someone in Bloomfield, Indiana, got married, graduated from high school, had their picture taken for a church directory, or just took the family in for a nice photograph, chances are that Monty Howell took the picture. At the end of a twenty-year run, Monty Howell had a lot of pictures. Luckily for the Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library, Mr. Howell realized their historical value and asked the library if they would like to add his collection of photographic negatives to the local history collection.
Questions about genealogy and local history make up a large portion of the reference questions at small, rural public libraries, and Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library is no exception. The library fields requests from patrons for copies of obituaries, marriage records, birth records, cemetery records, and any other documentary evidence we can find of their long-dead relatives. Imagine if, fifty years from now, a genealogist contacted the library for a photocopy of a newspaper obituary and we were able to provide her with not only the usual black-and-white microfiche printout but a full-color photograph of her relative at her wedding. Needless to say, the library was excited about receiving this invaluable collection of photographs.
THINK BEFORE YOU LEAP: Obstacles
Enticing as the collection of photographs was, accepting this donation was less than straightforward. To begin with, Monty was a great photographer, but he was no cataloger. The negatives were grouped together by the first letter of the last name of their subject, but they were not alphabetized. Not even close. The negatives were also in need of a more permanent, archival housing if our genealogist of the future was going to be able to make use of them. Clearly, the library would have to devote some serious staff time to organizing, cataloging, and preserving this collection. With a small staff that already had plenty to do, finding room in the schedule to take a librarian off desk to work with the photos would be a challenge.
Privacy was also a big concern. Not only were the majority of the subjects in the photos still alive, they were still living in town and still coming into the library. Some of them might not be too happy to learn that a copy of their photograph was sitting in the library, waiting to be accessed by any old “researcher” who happened to request it. Several library board members also realized that they probably had photos buried in the collection as well. Clearly, the library needed to develop a privacy policy that would ensure that the collection could be used while respecting the privacy concerns of its patrons.
Additionally, we had to develop a method of access. For reasons concerning privacy, preservation, as well as practicality, the library did not want just any patron digging through the drawers of negatives. Some kind of finding aid was needed that would allow patrons to search the collection without harming the negatives or invading the privacy of others.
OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLES
Finding a way to allow staff the time to work on the project was the first hurdle. As any public librarian knows, free time for new projects is often in short supply. To help alleviate this situation, the library began advertising its project at Indiana University (a scant twenty miles away, in Bloomington), home to the School of Library and Information Science, in the hopes of attracting an intern or two. If successful, the library would receive some much-needed help at little or no financial cost, and the interns would receive on-the-job experience in cataloging, local history reference, and privacy issues. Once the library found some willing interns, they immediately began counting, sorting, and measuring the negatives. Any information gleaned from the negatives, such as any names or dates, was entered in a spreadsheet.
While these initial steps were being taken, the library director and the board set out to address the privacy concerns raised by the collection. Numerous sources were consulted, including the library’s lawyer, the Indiana State Library, and other libraries with similar collections of photographs.
Legally, the library found itself on solid footing. The library’s lawyer pointed out that because the original photographer owned the copyrights to the images and transferred them in writing to the library, the library was comfortably within its legal rights to use the photographs. He cautioned against being too free with them, however; mounting a display of photographs of people who could very well walk into the library on any given day, for example, might not be the wisest of public relations strategies. It was also his opinion that photographic records that could be used to identify patrons were no different than written records, as far as the law was concerned.
Since these photographs were of living, breathing residents of Bloomfield, privacy was a central concern. To help guard against misuse, the library developed a “Use of Photos” form from those of other libraries that stipulates that the photos may be used only for research and that the researcher assumes all responsibility for fair copyright use and invasion of privacy. The collection was also moved to an area where only staff could access it, to prevent unauthorized patrons from browsing the collection. To balance this privacy with the need for access, a search tool of some type had to be created. The small amount of metadata associated with the photos (surname of the subject, and very occasionally an age or date) had to be collected and mounted in such a way that patrons could search for what they needed but not be able to invade the privacy of others. In other words, the library had to let the researchers know what we had without letting them have direct, unfettered access to it.
LESSONS
The lessons we learned at the Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library were several:
Logistics. When accepting a new collection of this nature, a library should make sure that it has adequate resources to care for it. Rehousing several thousand photographic negatives into archival-quality housing is both time consuming and expensive. The library needs to be sure that it has accurately anticipated both of these costs.
Privacy. The library can expect to have patrons who are excited about the genealogical prospects of such a collection as well as patrons who are horrified that “anyone” has access to their photograph. Clear policies should be put in place to address who is allowed to use the collection and for what purpose.
Access. The library needs a way to ensure that the collection is usable while still regulating access. Placing the collection in a staff-only area is a good way to do the former, and assembling an index takes care of the latter.
Acquiring this collection of photographic negatives has been both a blessing and a curse for the Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library. Although we were thrilled to add such a complete snapshot in time of its populace to its local history collection, the library also had to take great care to ensure that the collection is handled with the appropriate care.