Navigating Ambiguous Waters: Providing Access to Student Records in the University Archives

Because privacy laws heavily restrict access to student records, archivists are forced to weigh the research potential of these documents against their availability. At the center of this issue is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects individual student records from unauthorized third-party review. In 2003, the authors conducted a survey of one hundred Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Archives in the United States to gauge FERPA‟s impact on current archival appraisal and access policies for student records. Based on their survey findings, the authors suggest guidelines for instituting access policies that comply with FERPA and allow for the greatest possible access