Contact and Corrections
Correction requests, rights questions, and publication concerns should have a durable public path.
Ball Archives publishes this route now so researchers, rights holders, and other readers can understand how corrections, rights questions, provenance concerns, and publication issues will be handled once a verified public channel is activated.
Contact and corrections policy for Ball Archives public collection and item records.
Purpose
What this page is for
This route exists so the public archive has a visible home for correction policy, rights-review expectations, and other publication-related concerns. It remains part of the archive's public governance even before a live contact channel is published.
Readers should be able to see, in one durable place, how Ball Archives expects future correspondence about metadata accuracy, provenance clarifications, access status, and rights review to be handled.
Expected issue type
Metadata corrections
Requests that a title, date, creator field, note, or descriptive statement is inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading.
Expected issue type
Provenance clarifications
Evidence or context showing that public provenance, arrangement, or publication-status language needs to be refined.
Expected issue type
Rights and privacy concerns
Questions about rights statements, sensitivity, privacy, or whether a public page should present different access language.
Expected issue type
Publication integrity issues
Reports that a page overstates what Ball Archives has actually published, verified, or made publicly available.
Request preparation
What a correction or rights request should include
When possible, requests should identify the exact collection or item URL, the field at issue, and the reason the current public description may need revision.
- The exact Ball Archives URL for the collection or item at issue.
- A concise statement of the field, sentence, or public claim that appears incorrect or incomplete.
- Any citation, documentary evidence, or contextual explanation supporting the requested correction or review.
- A note describing whether the issue is factual, rights-related, privacy-related, or about publication status.
Editorial handling
Editorial handling expectations
Ball Archives should review corrections and rights-related concerns against the underlying private archival system of record, then update the public page without changing its canonical URL whenever possible.
If a correction affects publication status, rights language, or provenance, the site should preserve a clear updated date and treat the change as an editorial event rather than silent drift.
Review step
1. Intake and acknowledgment
Once a verified channel exists, Ball Archives should confirm that the request was received and identify whether it is a correction, a rights concern, or a broader publication issue.
Review step
2. Check against the system of record
Public-facing claims should be reviewed against the underlying private archival files, notes, and provenance evidence rather than against the website alone.
Review step
3. Update the public record deliberately
If a correction is warranted, Ball Archives should revise the public description, status note, or rights language with an updated date and without breaking the canonical URL.
Review step
4. Preserve an editorial trail
Material changes to provenance, publication status, or rights framing should be treated as editorial events rather than silent drift.
Activation requirements
What must happen before this route can go fully live
The policy page already exists. The public action should only be added once Ball Archives can verify a safe endpoint and a real review owner behind it.
- Publish a verified public mailbox or managed form that is safe to expose on ballarchives.org.
- Confirm that the channel is actively monitored by the archive steward responsible for corrections and rights review.
- State acknowledgment and review expectations in the same place the public channel is published.
- Keep this route as the durable policy page, even after the live contact action is added.