An Oral Contract Isn’t Worth the Paper It’s Printed On

Abstract

It is my belief that by now, librarians and archivists have lost their innocence and naiveté with respect to the legal and financial management of their collections. Or should have. The world in which we live has become a more complicated place than it was a generation ago and our sensibilities have been transformed. The 1980s altered our collective consciousness in many ways. During those ten years we witnessed an increased emphasis upon upward mobility, materialism, and conspicuous consumption. The eighties were a decade of high-speed greed and we became more litigious than ever before; we had to in order . . .