Description
"The 1966 Dylan Fan Mail Collection consists of correspondence, drawings, ephemera and small artifacts from the time period before and after Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident in July of 1966. The correspondences range from autographed photo requests, personal confessions, essays, lyrics, fan club inquiries, reactions to concert performances, and messages of adoration for Dylan and his music. Several correspondences came with small enclosures/artifacts which include a Ouija planchette, miniature harmonica, and other small momentos. Many of the fans who wrote to Dylan were from the United States, but there are also significant correspondences from countries including Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.
This collection falls into a legal and ethical gray area. Legally, the unpublished and orphaned nature of the materials creates issues relating to copyright and digitization. Ethically, providing access to these letters reveals personal information about individuals who may still be alive and did not consent to having their letters preserved in an archive. This poster presents a case study for the development of an access policy for the 1966 Dylan Fan Mail collection that I completed as part of my graduate capstone project and remote internship with the American Song Archives. This involves a review of US copyright law and how it impacts digitization projects, and a discussion of the balance between privacy and access in archives, specifically concerning collections of correspondence containing sensitive and potentially embarrassing information."