Statement on Standards and Ethics

The practices and methods used in this project follow the professional standards and ethics set by the Society of American Archivists, and the Association of College and Research Libraries Code of Ethics for Special Collection Librarians. Of particular importance is the understanding that the mission of individuals who participate in ATAP, despite any institutional affiliation, is to assist theatre companies in preserving their archives, and not to conduct collection development activities for their institutions. It is possible that a theatre company’s administrators may determine that they would prefer to place their records in an archival repository, and the team archivist may assist the company in identifying an appropriate repository that may be interested in maintaining the records.

Some theatre companies may already have a relationship with a repository, and that should be investigated during the initial contact with the company so that arrangements can be made to bring the repository into the discussion.

• ATAP’s goal is to help theatre companies establish their own archives;
• ATAP believes that the best way to help companies achieve this goal is through sustaining ongoing conversations involving those companies, other members of the local theatre community, dramaturgs, scholars, and professional archivists, and so endeavors to include these diverse perspectives on its local teams whenever possible;
• The practices and methods advocated by ATAP follow the professional standards and ethics set by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), including recognition of the importance of the protection of the privacy of individuals and avoiding conflicts of interest;
• While not the goal of ATAP, when theatre companies plan to donate archival materials to specific cultural heritage institutions, ATAP advocates including representation from those collecting institutions in any conversations with those companies when mutually acceptable, whether employees of the collecting institutions are official members of ATAP or not;
• In cases where ATAP team members are also professional archivists working for cultural heritage institutions, those archivists should differentiate clearly between transactions in which they act on behalf of ATAP and transactions in which they act on behalf of their employers, to avoid confusion;
• Whenever ATAP team members are also professional archivists acting on behalf of a collecting institution that is expected to acquire a specific company’s records in the future, those archivists should not accept honoraria or other remuneration from ATAP or that company.