Another interesting project announced recently, also with a significant web component, is the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center Archive. The archive was conceived by Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, attorneys representing several Guantánamo detainees as well as professors of law at Seton Hall University; and co-directed by Michael Nash, director of NYU’s Tamiment Library. The archive will be housed at Seton Hall and NYU.
According an NYU newsletter, “This initiative will collect records relating to the rules governing enemy combatants, legal strategies, prisoner interrogation, government representation of battlefield capture, recidivism, profiles of detainees, the detainees’ stories, and the global detention system established by the Bush administration.”
The archive will include lawyers’ files, oral histories of the attorneys and detainees, Department of Defense websites, photos, video, and electronic records. Relevant parts of the collection will debut under the California Digital Libraries project called Web-at-Risk: Preserving Our Nation’s Cultural Heritage.
The first priority is to collect oral histories and documents from the approximately 500 lawyers who have handled cases. Nash told ALA Online that the intention is to document “both the legal issues and the human aspects” of the global detention system.
Is this related only to the Middle East detainees or will you be collecting from the Cuban detainees that were there for more than 2 and a half years?