Preserving and Providing Accessto Privacy-sensitive Collections
Unmil P. Karadkar, Pat Galloway, King Davis

School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin
1616 Guadalupe St. Ste 5.202, Austin, TX 78701-1213
USA{unmil, Galloway}@ischool.utexas.edu, king.davis@austin.utexas.edu

KEYWORDS
Digital preservation, privacy-sensitive records, historical records

1. OVERVIEW
Recent developments in digitization and dissemination
technologies present the possibility of making archival collections
broadly available to a global audience. In addition, new collectionsof born-digital documents will be readily available to support a
multitude of objectives of their diverse, worldwide stakeholders.
Demographics such as family members, journalists, social services
providers, and policy makers can all benefit from access to these
historical collections.
While these advances are broadly welcomed in mostcircumstances, some archival collections include restricted orprivacy-sensitive collections. Examples of such privacy-sensitive
records include mental health institutional records, prison
records, records of the Truth and reconciliation commissions,
Nazi archives, and the Guatemalan national police archives. While
access to paper documents is protected by distance, physicalbarriers, and varying state and national policies and laws, digitalaccess may exacerbate threats to the privacy of individuals namedin these records. The online availability of such records has apotential to stigmatize or embarrass the families or descendantsof those named in the records when they bear no responsibility
for the acts or health conditions of the named individuals, raising
ethical issues in providing broad, open access to these records. In
some cases, the legal frameworks for digital records aresubstantially less clear than those for physical records.

2. TOPICS
This workshop will invite broad participation from scholars andpractitioners who work with or are interested in issues
surrounding the preservation of and providing access to digital,privacy-sensitive collections. A non-exhaustive list of topics ofinterest include:• Digitization, curation, and preservation of privacy-sensitivecollections• Theoretical and metadata models• Policies, workflows, and protections for accessing materials•
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Issues in using cloud services for privacy-sensitive materials
storage and scholarship
Scholarly information behavior and needs
Models that recognize diverse user needs (for example,aggregate data, individual information)
Institutional and political negotiations surrounding access to
privacy-sensitive collections
Mechanisms and models for data retrieval from handwritten
documents
Privacy-aware digital repository architectures
Privacy-aware crowdsourcing and transcription methods
Privacy issues in designing user interfaces and datavisualizations
Privacy mitigation in data analytics and presentation
Evaluation of existing software, infrastructure, andtechniques
Social justice issues and non-scholarly outcomes of work withrestricted collections

3. TARGET AUDIENCE
While our first workshop has been accepted for hosting at theDigital Humanities 2017 conference, we have not conducted it yet.
We have heard anecdotal expressions of interest from several
communities but are unsure how broad and deep such interest
goes. In this light, we have tried to make the topic as broad aspossible, while retaining the core characteristics and constraints
that we have found in our work. We anticipate receiving 10 to 20
submissions and accepting 4 to 6 for presentation at theworkshop. We are unable to gauge the level of interest in the iPres
community in attending the workshop without presenting. With
connections in the Asian iSchools and the digital libraries
communities.

4. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS
The workshop will not require special technical support. A
projector for presentations and an internet connection forparticipants to showcase web-based collections will suffice.

5. DURATION AND FORMATThis workshop will be held over half a day. This time frame willallow for adequate exploration of the various aspects of theworkshop topics as well as domains via presentations, as well as
in-depth discussion. The workshop will be held in a seminar style,with several short and long presentations. Individuals may
participate in the workshop without presenting. The organizers
will include an open discussion time to engage the audience and,especially, to tease out aspects of scholarship with privacysensitive digital collections that the presentations do not cover.

6. ORGANIZERS
Unmil P. Karadkar is an assistant professor in the School ofInformation at The University of Texas at Austin. He situates his
work at the intersection of digital libraries, human-computerinteraction, and visualization. He studies data practices ofresearchers with an eye toward identifying unmet informationneeds. Based on an understanding of these needs, he designs
software to support their evolving practices and evaluates theimpact of this software on their work. His research contributes toareas such as the design of digital collection interfaces and digital
humanities. His research has been funded by the National Science
Foundation, Texas General Land Office, USAA, and most recently,
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Pat Galloway is a professor in the School of Information at
The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include
institutionalization of digital repositories and appropriateappraisal practices for digital records. In keeping with herinterests as a historian, she is also interested in understanding
how archiving and cultural preservation in general fit into their
historical and cultural contexts. Pat has developed a suite ofcourses designed to prepare students to become what has recently
been referred to as "Archival Engineers," capable of managing andmaintaining digital cultural objects indefinitely; she also teaches
archival appraisal and a course on historical museums. She
worked as a medieval archaeologist in Europe in the 1970s andthen became involved with humanities-oriented computing,which she supported in the Computer Unit of Westfield Collegeof the University of London, where her primary interest was text
analysis. From 1979 to 2000 she worked at the Mississippi
Department of Archives and History (MDAH), where she was adocumentary editor, archaeological editor, historian, museum
exhibit developer, and electronic records program director, whileat the same time creating the MDAH's automation program fromscratch as manager of information systems. She is the author ofChoctaw
Genesis1500-1700(1995)
andPracticing
Ethnohistory(2006). From 1997 to 2000 she directed the NHPRC
grant-funded project at MDAH to create an electronic records
program for the state of Mississippi.
King Davis is a research professor in the School ofInformation at The University of Texas at Austin and has madeoutstanding contributions in the field of Health and Mental Healthover the last three decades. Dr. Davis held the Robert Lee
Sutherland Chair in Mental Health and Social Policy at theUniversity of Texas at Austin, School of Social Work. From 2003-2008, Dr. King also served as the Executive Director of the Hogg
Foundation, which awards grants and manages programs toimprove mental health research and services in Texas. Prior tohis work in Texas, Dr. Davis served as the Commissioner of theDepartment of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance
Abuse Services for the Commonwealth of Virginia by Virginia
Governor L. Douglas Wilder. He also has served as the John Galt
Chair in Public Mental Health at the University of Virginia’s
Department of Psychiatry.
Dr. Davis has held academic
appointments at Washington University in St. Louis, Virginia
Commonwealth University, Eastern Virginia Medical School andNorfolk State University. Dr. Davis received his PhD fromBrandeis University, Florence Heller School for Social Policy andManagement, and his MSW from California State University
Fresno, School of Social Work. He has written and publishednumerous articles and reports on mental health, fund raising,managed health care and social justice. His book, The Color ofSocial Policy, was published in 2004.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This workshop is supported in part by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation via grant number: 11500653 under the Scholarly
Communications program.