Privacy and Access in the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Records

Archival collections that include records about victims and survivors of child abuse present unique challenges regarding privacy, access, and representation. With a long tenure of collecting on the history of social welfare, University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) in the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston had to address these challenges before processing and making available the historic inactive records of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). UASC and the MSPCC took steps to ensure that the MSPCC collection would be accessible to the survivors represented in the records and to their descendants, while also providing appropriate access to the collection for the wider public. To protect the privacy of any former MSPCC clients who may still be living, the MSPCC and UASC collaborated to establish a set of policies that can be adapted by archives working with similar collections.