4/17/2015 PM update: The Library Journal has now updated its report on “the incident”, with statements from UO Library Dean Adriene Lim, here: In January Harbaugh received a letter from Doug Blandy, senior vice provost for academic affairs. The letter stated that the material was provided to him in violation…
Posts tagged as “UO Presidential Archives”
Lisa Peet has the story in the Library Journal, here: … Fox, previously a non–tenure track associate professor in UO’s history department and the university’s Robert D. Clark Honors College, had been the director of UO special collections and university archives since 1999. He worked with such noted collections as…
4/20/2015 update: Please see the retractions posted at https://uomatters.com/2015/04/archivists-resign-coltrane-got-sharon-rudnick-to-write-report-on-presidential-archives-release.html 4/15/2015 PM update: I’ve made a public records request to UO, in an effort to obtain some hard data and get to the bottom of all this back and forth between Mr. Gary and me: From: Bill Harbaugh <[email protected]> Subject: PR request,…
4/13/2015: The RG has more, with additional quotes and explanation, here. 4/12/2015: Rich Read has the story in the Oregonian, here: More than 100 University of Oregon faculty members have signed a letter urging reinstatement of an archivist suspended after a records release that UO’s interim president called unlawful. The…
4/4/2015 update: Shelly Kerr is the UO Counseling Center Director who handed over Jane Doe’s counseling records, at the request of Interim UO GC Doug Park. New legislation would make that illegal. Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum on the RG Op-Ed page:
We like to think of college as a wonderful time of growth and learning. The reality in Oregon, however, is that college can be a very dangerous period for too many young women.
Recent events have given our students a good reason to worry that when they have been sexually assaulted and want to have the benefit of victims’ support and counseling services, they cannot trust their college to protect their privacy. That is because Oregon is one of only 10 states without confidentiality protections for victims seeking services from domestic violence or sexual assault advocates.
It is time for Oregon to step forward and ensure the privacy of victims’ communications and records. We know that many students who have been sexually assaulted are choosing not to seek critically needed help. Studies indicate that the primary reason victims of sexual assault do not come forward is that they fear disclosure of extremely private and potentially embarrassing information — without their consent. All too often, this fear is justified. …
4/3/2015 update: Students rally in support of Karen Stokes and transparency
Ally Brayton has the story in the Emerald here, and Diane Dietz has more in the RG here:
Dozens of University of Oregon students rallied at noon Friday in support of a counseling center employee who says she was fired because she was a whistleblower.
Karen Stokes, who was executive assistant to the director of the counseling center, announced she had been terminated in a March 26 e-mail sent to counseling center staff.
The reason, she said in the e-mail, was her public criticism of the university’s “unethical” collection of a student’s therapy records in preparation for litigation.
A UO spokesman said a week ago that Stokes wasn’t fired but merely “transitioning.”
On Friday, spokeswoman Julie Brown said Stokes is still in the university’s employ, but Brown couldn’t say in what position or capacity or whether her job was permanent or temporary. …
3/26/2015 update: It’s looking more and more like the story goes like this: UCTC Director Shelly Kerr told Karen Stokes she was fired. Stokes wrote the email in the RG story and sent it to the UCTC staff and the RG. Klinger was out of the loop, perhaps because he just was, perhaps because the admins don’t trust his judgement after his disastrous press release on the archivists. Someone in JH read the post on my blog or the RG website. They quickly told Kerr to back off, told Stokes they’d find her a job somewhere else at UO if she’d stop talking to reporters, and told Klinger to feed this to the press, pronto.
Update: The RG story has now been updated with a challenge from Duck Advocate and Presidential Spokesperson Tobin Klinger of Ms Stokes’s description of events. Purely coincidental, Klinger seems to think. Of course Klinger also thought UO wasn’t filing a counterclaim against the survivor of the alleged basketball gang rape – or at least that’s what he told reporters.
Wow, that’s 3x more than what UO says was in the 20 years of Presidential Archives they made me return. Laura Gunderson has the story in the Oregonian, here: Kristen Grainger, spokeswoman for Gov. Kate Brown, wrote in an email that some of the documents released today were labeled “internal…
As might be expected, the Society of American Archivists has compiled a thorough bibliography of news stories about the UO archives release, here. I’m still waiting to see if UO Library Dean Adriene Lim will waive the $210.63 public records fee and show what she and external reviewers had said…
4/20/2015 update: Please see the retractions posted at https://uomatters.com/2015/04/archivists-resign-coltrane-got-sharon-rudnick-to-write-report-on-presidential-archives-release.html Update: Meanwhile Gov. Kate Brown has sent an email to all state workers, praising the DAS employees who refused to delete the emails between Kitzhaber and his attorney – and then leaked them to Willamette Week. WWeek report here. Quite a…
3/17/2014 update: I went to the Library Committee’s meeting today. Dean Adriene Lim was adamant that she was not trying to avoid Senate review of the new library privacy policy, and that as far as she was concerned the Library Committee was the Senate, since it’s a Senate committee, but that she was fully willing to go through the regular Senate policy on policies.
She said had been told that AVP Chuck Triplett was the “guru” for UO policies, and so she asked him how to proceed. As you can see below, Triplett thought that there was no need for this privacy policy to go through the Senate process. Given that the administration’s motivation for this policy arose out of LibraryGate, or as they now call it, “the incident”, Triplett should have known better than to advise Lim to try and slip this through on the side.
This is from the OSU library’s privacy policy:
Patron information is strictly confidential. It is for the use of library staff only; it can, of course, be divulged to the patron. Patron information is not to be given to non-library individuals, including parents, friends, professors, university administrators, police, FBI, university security staff, or the CIA. Only a court order can require the disclosure of patron records. The university librarian is responsible for compliance with such orders.
Needless to say UO’s proposed new policy (in full below) is a lot weaker:
When a violation of law or established policy is suspected, the Libraries reserves the right to electronically monitor its public computers and network, and/or reveal a user’s identity to institutional authorities and/or law enforcement.
Frankly, it reads as a post-hoc justification for Lim’s decision to disclose my circulation records to the administration. I told Lim I thought this would be problematic, and that she should at least consider having something concrete to take to the Senate about implementing the promises that were made to the Senate about general review of UO’s public records problems, or perhaps something about the documents that were *not* in UO’s Presidential Archives – e.g. athletics money deals – and therefore were lost to history (yes, I did mention Hillary Clinton).
FWIW, the RegisterGuard report on that Senate meeting is here.
… The UO’s new dean of libraries, Adriene Lim, told the gathered faculty on Wednesday that she considers an individual’s right to privacy to be a universal human right.
But she also said that Oregon public records laws “spell out types of records that should be public and available for scrutiny. I’d be the first one to advocate for that openness and transparency.”
Coltrane and Lim said the issue of transparency will be reviewed by university officials after Hershner Hunter completes its investigation. [UO M: I’ve made a public records request to Dave Hubin’s Public Records Office for the contract showing what UO’s Interim General Counsel Doug Park has asked HH to do. No response yet.]
The university will “try to increase openness and transparency as much as we can,” Lim said. Coltrane said he’d bring the university’s Office of Public Records to the table.
Harbaugh said Wednesday that that’s what he had in mind when he sought the presidential documents at the archive – after being thwarted by the public records office.
He said he had no intention of violating student privacy laws or damaging the university.
“I’m trying to make a point about the university’s obsessive secrecy, about how it functions, makes decisions and operates as a public agency,” Harbaugh said.
3/12/2014: AVP Chuck Triplett advises Library Dean Adriene Lim that new Library privacy policy can bypass Senate review
Thanks to several people for leaking this email and proposed policy to UO Matters. Page down to see how it evolves as it gets exposed to the light of day. It’s now circulating on the Senate listserv, and we will be taking steps to
a) ensure Dean Lim does not implement this policy without Senate approval, and
b) ensure Chuck Triplett is monitored, to prevent future attempts to subvert the Policy on Policies.
Still no information on how Lim will deal with public records that were removed from the Presidential Archives by Johnson Hall.
The UO Board reaffirmed the PonP just last week. Triplett didn’t waste any time breaking it:
Date: March 11, 2015 at 9:20:07 AM PDT
To: Adriene Lim
Subject: Library privacy policy draft – latest version
Dear ULC members,
I’ve heard back from Chuck Triplett and he advises me that he doesn’t think our new Privacy Policy rises to the level of an “institutional policy.” This means that the draft would not need to go through more layers of review in the way that other institutional policies are reviewed. He thinks that, after we go through our library-level review, the policy can just be posted on our website.
Library faculty still have until March 16, 2015, to provide input and comments, but I wanted to share with you the latest version of the draft because it contains two new sections that were added last week: 1.) a section was added to address the security cameras we have in our Special Collections & University Archives area. These cameras are not new — they’ve been in place for a while, but the Libraries had not finalized a policy regarding them yet); 2.) a few sentences were added to address the privacy audit and compliance concerns that were raised at our last ULC meeting. When the policy is finalized, the Libraries will conduct an audit of systems and services to make sure that we are complying with our own policy.
If you have any final comments about this latest draft, please let me know by March 16, 2015. Thank you for your help with this.
Best regards,
Adriene
Adriene Lim, Ph.D., MLIS
Dean of Libraries
Philip H. Knight Chair
University of Oregon Libraries
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1299
Phone: 541-346-1892
Email: [email protected]
Note: After I sent this email to Lim and cced the Senate listserv, she sent out an email changing her mind and deciding to ignore Triplett, and send this policy through the regular PAC process, which will bring it to the Senate.
Here’s the policy in dispute:
I’ve followed with an email to PR asking for the price on just part b), and to Dean Lim, asking if she’ll provide these directly. No response from either, yet. Dear Mr. Harbaugh: The University of Oregon has received your public records request for “a) documents from external reviewers, consultants…
2/27/2015 update: UO Dean Adriene Lim’s disclosure of circulation records violated university policy. Disclosure of confidential information is a serious crime so make sure you have something like Record Storage Document Management in place if you own a company. Oregon State Library policy, that is: Confidentiality of Records Policy on…
Just kidding, that will never happen, and this situation is not funny. The latest Rich Read report in the Oregonian doesn’t have anything about what documents the President’s Office is hiding from the public. This is despite the fact that many emails in the Presidential Archives, about matters clearly related…
That’s the consensus from the brandy and cigar circle down at the Faculty Club Library Room tonight. His $209K interim job will end June 30th, or sooner.
2/18/2015 update w/ response below. 2/17/2015: Looking for documents from the UO Archives? Be prepared to justify your request to UO Library Dean Adriene Lim. This restrictive language was recently added to the Archives webpage, here: University Archive Finding Aids Permanent University Archive public records are available for research, and…
2/15/2015: The NYT has the story, here. Oh wait, these letters are from Jeb Bush, found in his Dad’s presidential archives. Never mind. Meanwhile, still no word on the outcome of Amanda Walkup’s investigation of the UO presidential archive release, which Coltrane told the UO faculty was “unlawful” before she…