Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Records: Who Should Collect and Maintain Them?

This article addresses the many challenges the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), the nation's oldest scientific laboratory, faces in maintaining its records. One of the most serious problems is the number of archival repositories which collect LBL records. The author discusses what the implications are for LBL and the archival profession in having institutional records alienated, and what safeguards are in place to protect the identification and integrity of federal records, but how those safeguards fall short of the objective in actual practice. Lastly, this article discusses one possible model for LBL to work with other archival repositories, as they build special collections which include federal records of post-World War II science.