Respecting privacy: Ethical and pragmatic considerations

In keyboarding and coding the linguistic notes collected by J.P. Harrington, the Harrington Database Project has encountered situations in which the increased accessibility to this valuable archive jeopardizes existing indigenous communities or individuals and their descendants. Some considerations have to do with publicizing private or embarrassing information, others have to do with stories and songs considered sacred, others with the protection of sacred sites and village locations. Even for materials already in the public domain, there are both ethical and pragmatic reasons to limit accessibility. The project attempts to balance the interests of both scholars and indigenous communities.