Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Historical Health Sciences Collections

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Date

2012

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Publisher

Northern Kentucky University

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Abstract

Historical health sciences collections are rare and unique materials containing large amounts of information subject to confidentiality and privacy laws and concerns. Formerly, the custodians of these collections handled these issues in relative obscurity, but technological changes and changing laws and norms around health care privacy have made these issues more acute and public. The intent of this Article is to describe the nature of these collections and the qualifications of the people who administer them, and to analyze some of the privacy and confidentiality issues that arise in the course of that work. The aim is to acquaint privacy officers, in-house legal counsel, and other members of the legal profession with the privacy and confidentiality challenges that these collections present, with the needs of researchers who use these collections, and with the reasons why historical health sciences collections are important.

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Keywords

privacy, archives, special collections, library legal issues, health sciences special collections, confidentiality, HIPAA

Citation

Anne T. Gilliland and Judith A. Wiener, "Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Historical Health Sciences Collections," Northern Kentucky Law Review 39, no. 2 (2012): 189-210.