Preservation of Sources

This past weekend's New York Times had an interesting editorial on the challenges historians of the Bush (43) administration are likely to face: missing sources.

True to its mania for secrecy, the Bush administration is leaving behind vast gaps in the most sensitive White House e-mail records, and with lawyers and public interest groups in hot pursuit of information that deserves to be part of the permanent historical record.

As noted, this is not a phenomenon unique to the Bush administraiton - every administration has secrets they would like to keep - but the fact that this administration's dealings, unlike its predecessors, was largely conducted by email - creating correspondence 50 times more voluminous than that of the Clinton administration - means that the gaps might not be evident until the missing information is permanently lost.

The editorial goes on to note the public should thank the historians and archivists suing the Bush administration for access to documents which might track the misdeeds of the administration, and calls upon President-elect Obama to open up records previously shielded by "political interference."

For me, the article raised the question: what role for historians? Do we merely interpret the record, or can we have a role in preserving it as well?

Read the article in its entirety here.