Record-keeping as an ethical imperative

Abstract

Record-keeping ethics ought to have a central place in the professional training of archivists and records managers, not only as a preparation for handling ethical dilemmas, but also for the perspective it can throw on the character of the record-keeping enterprise. Antiquarian or commercial interests alone are not sufficient to provide the enterprise with its moral drive; accountability, construed in the widest possible sense of the term, supplies an ethical imperative to record-keeping.