Archivists, Collectors, Dealers and Replevin: Case Studies on Private Ownership of Public Documents

Citation

Neville, K. (2013), "Archivists, Collectors, Dealers and Replevin: Case Studies on Private Ownership of Public Documents", Collection Building, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 122-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/CB-04-2013-0014

In recent years there has been increased concern among archivists and public servants regarding public documents that belong to government archives appearing for sale in the open market. The purpose of this book is to discuss the problems associated with displaced government documents in the US Laws vary with each state; consequently, this is not a legal guide but rather a discussion of historical government documents in the USA and the role of the archivist in their protection from loss through theft and neglect.

Replevin is the legal action brought to recover specified items such as valuable historical documents discarded, lost or stolen from government departments, according to the Society of American Archivists. The sheer volume of documents generated by the American government is staggering – from 1861 to 1916 there was over 1 million cubic feet of records created, with many kept in poor conditions and disposed of inappropriately. Enterprising book dealers collected many documents that proved valuable and sold them to historical societies and individual collectors. Some documents ended up in private collections and personal libraries, as discarded documents were saved by public servants, collected from the local rubbish tip or picked up as “spoils of war.” The most famous case was Martha Washington's will that was saved from burning by soldiers during the Civil War and then ended up in the hands of an officer. When his daughter sold the manuscript to J.P. Morgan, the US Supreme Court claimed it was stolen property and sued in 1913 to recover it. Cases such as this one would make buyers and sellers of old government documents wary. However, the auction market for rare historical documents in the USA is in the tens of millions of dollars, so it is not surprising that government manuscripts are sold with an unknown provenance and later become the focus of a legal case when the government attempts to recover them.

This book includes several case studies created by the author to highlight problems and provoke discussion, as ownership of documents can be difficult to determine. The author gives a short explanation and analysis of each case study with observations on the situation and possible solutions. There is a brief review of the legislation in Chapter 5, while Chapter 6 discusses the different issues in the sale of government documents. Ways to protect documents are covered in Chapter 8 with measures for archivists, buyers and sellers of documents to protect themselves from legal problems like Replevin.

The book is very well researched, and the author has consulted a range of primary and secondary documentation. While the topic of the book is complex and multi‐faceted, with many conflicting viewpoints, the author has examined all aspects of the issue and described the problems with an attempt to get a balanced view. The author has a long and impressive career in archives and related fields and here has produced a very objective view of the problems and issues with lost public documents. This book would be suitable for archivists employed in the US public service, as well as librarians, historians and collectors with an interest in this area.