| To an attorney practicing law in the common law system, the term "replevin" describes a legal remedy for recovering personal property held by another party. In this civil procedure, the determination of rightful ownership falls to the court. Archivists and manuscript collectors have appropriated this same term to describe any effort by a government archives to recover public records in private hands, whether these efforts involve the courts or are carried out informally through discussions and negotiations with private parties. The number of "true" replevin cases involving disputed public records is small and existing commentary in the archival literature focus on these judicial decisions. This dissertation examines the quieter cases, developing a sharper understanding of what replevin means to individuals who are charged with preserving records and to those who are personally driven to collect. Three state archives serve as case studies and semi-structured interviews with institutional employees, archival records, active records, statute and case law as data sources.;A consistent message emerging from discussions with government officials is that each replevin case is singular in the manner in which it is resolved. Still, there is an apparent pattern to the replevin of public records, conceptualized in this dissertation as a six-stage process. Each case begins with the discovery of the alienated record and results in a custody determination favoring either the government or the private party. This dissertation determines that variances in statute, case law, and the involvement of legal counsel strongly influence a government's decision to pursue, the shape of negotiations, and the state's ultimate ability to recover the targeted record.;The issue of replevin is one that has provoked friction between the community of government archivists and some members of the collecting community, a friction largely stemming from an ambiguous understanding of the nature of a "public record" and disagreement as to whether an archives should lay claim to records that never have been in its possession. This study probes the motivations of public officials pursuing public records and argues that it is in the public interest for public archives to have an active replevin agenda. |
