Privacy Policy

The project's position is to let the historical documents stand as found to the greatest degree possible. Simultaneously, it has been sensitive to concerns that some of the information in the collected documents may contain traumatic details or reveal private details. In collaboration with the Community Council, we identified the kinds of information to identify as sensitive, such as current personal details, medical records, and accounts of potentially criminal behaviour. We also identified language use that would currently be considered offensive. Finally, we created a matrix which our data preparers used to identify records as sensitive and the degree of sensitive material.

Our objective is to balance fairly the desire for researchers and the public to have details of these events with the honour of participants and legal obligations.

In the archival collection, for records containing relatively minor sensitivity issues the abstract or summary includes a warning, so that users are informed before reading through the entire document. For the very small number of archival records with substantial sensitivity issues, we have not provided the full document, but only the abstract and a notification that the full document can be obtained from the source repository on request.

In the oral histories, for records containing relatively minor sensitivity issues, the summary or abstract includes a warning, so that users are informed before reading or listening to the oral history. In cases where the conversation includes content which is substantially sensitive, that portion of the audio has been replaced by silence and the transcript is replaced by a grey box with a note indicating the length of the redaction. The redacted sections are typically less than a minute and in any oral history in which they appear add up to only a small fraction of the document.

With consultation from the community and the research collective at the 2019 LOI Spring Institute, and with continuing advice from the Community Council, the digital archive team developed this sensitivity matrix with a weighted scale for the different types of sensitivities identified. Research Assistant Gord Lyall presented the matrix design, as well as the digital archive project, at a 2019 American Studies Association panel on the ethics of digital archives called “Building Digital Archives as We Fight”. The audience received the concept very positively and some panelists acknowledged the value of a similar framework for their own projects. After more refinement and some back and forth, based on CC recommendations, and ultimately decided in a meeting with the CC and the Steering Committee, the project agreed to make all material, with the exception of some mental health records which are restricted under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act of BC, available to the public with a warning label to the visitor giving details on the kind(s) of sensitivities they may encounter as outlined in the matrix below.