Open access eprint archives are where authors of published research papers and papers destined for peer reviewed publication can self-archive the full texts of their work for all to see. The list can be found here.
[via Open Access News formerly known as FOS News, weblog maintained by Peter Suber]

Cornell Law Review 88 (March 2003) 651-732
Jonathan Turley: PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS AND POPULAR GOVERNMENT: THE CONVERGENCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND PROPERTY THEORY IN CLAIMS OF OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF
PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS

SUMMARY:
... " Madison's warning is particularly apt in the context of presidential
records. ... The Archivist also performs a sentinel function in protecting
executive privilege. ... In order to pass constitutional muster, the Bush
Administration must establish that (1) executive privilege may be exercised
indefinitely by a former president; (2) the right to assert executive privilege
may be transferred to a third partly by a former president; (3) the right to
assert executive privilege may be passed to an heir or designated party upon
death or disability; and (4) third parties may designate an individual or group
to assert executive privilege when a former president dies or suffers a
disability without executing a prior designation. ... It is difficult to trace
the origins of the theory that a former president can transfer executive
privilege to a third party. ... If the will had attached the transfer of
executive privilege authority to the transfer of presidential papers, six people
would have claim to its assertion. ... The transfer of the authority to assert
executive privilege by will or designation carries a faint notion of the
original proprietary theory of presidential papers. ... However, this view
stemmed less from an executive privilege viewpoint than from a sense of personal
ownership in the Hegelian sense. ...
[...]
Conclusion
When one considers the copious amounts of records and documents produced each
day in the federal government, it is hard to imagine that at the beginning of
the Republic, the country had a reputation for the reckless disregard of records
and documentation. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his masterpiece, Democracy in
America, that:
[In America, no one] bothers about what was done before his time. No method
is adopted; no archives are formed; no documents are brought together, even when
it would be easy to do so. When by chance someone has them, he is casual about
preserving them. Among my papers I have original documents given to me by public
officials to answer some of my questions. American society seems to live from
day to day, like an army on active service. n459

Today, the very suggestion that public officials give original documents in
response to inquiries is enough to send the most stalwart archivist into a fetal
position. n460 Perhaps the most valuable of such documents are presidential
papers. Although agencies generate important material in the execution of
policy, it is from presidential papers [*731] that historians can divine the
genesis of policy. n461 As the interest in these documents has increased, their
value as property has increased in proportion to that interest. Both historians
and heirs value these documents for what they reveal about the development of
policy and government actions. For some heirs, these documents serve as a
valuable commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. For others, they offer a
way of controlling or suppressing historical reviews of an administration. n462
Still others view the value of ownership as the right to destroy the papers to
preserve a legacy. n463 Many heirs may have identified with the explanation of
President Harding's widow's decision to destroy his papers: "'We must be loyal
to Wurr'n and preserve his memory.'" n464

The recent controversy over the Bush order reveals not only the different
uses of this property, but the absence of a cohesive theory of ownership. In the
shift toward a constitutional paradigm, conflicting utilitarian rationales for
control have muddled the debate over presidential papers. In fairness to the
Bush Administration, the conceptual basis for the exercise of either private or
public ownership of presidential papers was mired in contradiction and ambiguity
long before [*732] its arrival. From the earliest dispute over Washington's
papers, there was a failure to address the basic claims of ownership of either
the public or private collectors. This Article attempts to offer some foundation
for that debate. Although certain provisions of the Bush order are facially
unconstitutional, they highlight this confusion on a conceptual level that has
reigned in this area for over two hundred years. They also offer an intriguing
microcosm to explore basic notions of ownership and how those notions changed
from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. With the maturation of the
United States, Americans have come to cherish their historical legacy to an
extent that might surprise someone like de Tocqueville. Americans now understand
that an archive is not some dead zone of boxed documents, but is part of a
nation's active search for self-meaning. These documents are part of an American
legacy that defines not only a prior administration, but also a people.
Presidential records are the most vital form of jus publicum because they serve
as the very gateway for the exploration of public policy - the only true
manifest destiny of a free people.

We have reported here in February Gov. Jeb Bush's budget proposal to dismantle the State Library of Florida and the State Archives and move the contents to other state departments.
Here is the latest information:
Right now, writes Pam Cooper on June 9 to me, almost all of the jobs in the State Library have been saved temporarily. The Archives lost about 8 people. We still have to be vigilant and watch every move that the Governor makes. We know that next year we could be facing the same problems. However, the Division of Historical Resources did not do so well. They have lost almost all of their funding in many of the grants. All of us who love history should be very worried.
More information about the case can be found in two messages from Jim Schnur (St. Petersburg, FL) in INETBIB (Message #1, message #2).

Nabil al-Tikriti's report on his 25-31 May visit to Baghdad and his
assessment of the MS and Libraries situation there: "IRAQ MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS, ARCHIVES, & LIBRARIES: SITUATION REPORT" posted on IraqCrisis and some other places, is now available in a formatted on-line version.
Excerpt:
NATIONAL LIBRARY & ARCHIVES / Dar al-Kutub wa al-Watha'iq:
This facility, located right across from the Ministry of Defense, was completely burned and looted. Due to limitations of time, I
was unable to visit this facility during working hours. From the outside, it is clear that no materials could possibly have been
preserved on site. As this site also appears not to have been cleaned and cleared, it may also prove useful for a criminal
investigation.

Osama Naqshbandi of the Dar al-Makhtutat reported that the National Library had 12 million documents. It was said to be
particularly strong holdings in Arabic periodicals (?the largest Arabic newspaper collection in the world?) and documents from
the period of Hashemite rule (1920-1958), in addition to a few documents dating from the period of Ottoman rule
(1534-1918). Although he felt that the periodical collection was completely lost, Mr. Naqshbandi had heard that some of the
more important documents may have been taken to a safe place by archival staff, but was not sure.

The Ethno musicological Video for Instruction and Analysis Digital Archive project (EVIA
http://www.indiana.edu/~eviada) is a joint effort of Indiana University and the University of Michigan to establish a digital archive of ethno musicological video for use by scholars and instructors.
Currently funded for a total of $1.4 million by the combined contributions of Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Indiana University, and the University of Michigan, the archive is being designed by experts in the fields of ethnomusicology, archiving, video, intellectual property, and digital technology.
Ultimately, the EVIA Digital Archive intends to preserve video recordings and make them easily accessible for teaching and research, providing an alternative to physical archives
whose unique materials are available only to people who travel to the archive location.
[via H-MUSEUM]

When tomorrow's historians go to write the chronicles of decision-making that led to Gulf War II, they may be startled to find there's not much history to be written. The same is true of Clinton's war over Kosovo, Bush Sr.'s Desert Storm, and a host of other major episodes of U.S. national security policy. Many of the kinds of documents that historians of prior wars, and of the Cold War, have taken for granted—memoranda, minutes, and the routine back-and-forth among assistant secretaries of state and defense or among colonels and generals in the Joint Chiefs of Staff—simply no longer exist.
The problem is not some deliberate plot to conceal or destroy evidence. The problem—and it may seem churlish to say so in an online publication—is the advent of e-mail.
Read more of Fred Kaplan's article "How e-mail is wrecking our national archive" here.

In order to make this unique collection more available to researchers from around the world, the Rothschild Archive in partnership with Waddesdon Manor has launched its free online Rothschild Research Forum. Registered members will have access to articles, finding aids, transcripts and virtual exhibitions, and have the opportunity to communicate with other researchers through the Forum's message board. For further information please visit the Rothschild Archive web site at http://www.rothschildarchive.org
Free? What is free, if someone interested in registering has to mention two referees with "State name, institution, postal address, telephone number and relationship to you" who are contacted before access is allowed to the forum!

Free and accessible archives are the lifeblood of historical scholarship and this extraordinary act of philistinism constitutes little less than the suffocation of the Italian national memory. It is the equivalent of parliament closing down the English local record offices and all the awkward knowledge and troublesome documents they contain. The naturally sedate International Council on Archives is enraged, protesting that Italy's pre-eminent place in world culture could be endangered and, just as importantly, "Italian citizens will lose their fundamental rights of access to administrative information" and "government will lose its operational memory" - which is arguably what the reforms are meant to achieve. Indeed, the closures form part of a pattern of thinking about the past prevalent within Berlusconi's government and his Forza Italia party. It is predicated first on a denial of history, and then a highly aggressive rewriting of memory. Archives, documents, records of events are not generally welcome.
Tristram Hunt (London) in The Guardian.

Changing images
The role of photographic collections in the digital age
An international SEPIA conference at the
Finnish Museum of Photography
Helsinki
18-20 September 2003
Read more in archives-fr.