50 · Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
Challenge 1 Challenge 2 Challenge 3
Resources to describe and digitize. Physical housing and preservation. Providing training &tools for researchers,
e.g., visual literacy tip sheets, media
identification, collection background
documents for context.
Size and materials -they don’t fit in
readily with the rest of the archival
collections.
Staffing to process or describe. Many materials were left out of finding
aids in the past, and are lurking in
unprocessed storage.
Some artifacts are shelf hogs, especially
since they are sometimes off shapes and
don’t stack well.
The intersection of access and technology
is a problem. We have ideas on how to
improve it, but it is very cumbersome
under the current system.
Space constraints. Subjective nature of art material
(description).
Specialized metadata standards, which
don’t map well to standard archival and
library descriptive tools, and that require
specialized knowledge on the part of the
archivist.
Physical challenges of serving oversize,
three-dimensional, and odd size materials
to researchers.
Housing materials of various sizes.
Standards: We lack a common set of data
standards and protocols for cataloging
non-bibliographic or manuscript content
such as art/artifacts.
Cataloging: A standards-based
networked data entry environment
for cataloging these material types is
not available. In addition, staff are not
trained in standards for cataloging non-
book/manuscript materials and/or do not
have enough subject expertise to develop
metadata.
Space/housing for storage, display and
use. In several units, specialized storage,
reading room, and display areas for art/
artifacts are not provided for. Most
collections are intershelved with book/
archival manuscript materials. The
architectural drawings and art properties
collections do have specialized storage.
Storage. Conservation. Creating records in a system that
accommodates print and archival
holdings.
Storage. Preservation. Use.
Storage, both in terms of adequate
space but also appropriate space that is
temperature controlled and secure.
Keeping up the inventory and updating
appraisals.
Funding for managing the collections.
Storage: creating appropriate storage
containers and finding adequate space is
always a challenge.
Maintenance: Repairing historic musical
instruments is expensive and there aren’t
many qualified luthiers in the area.
Storage and handling of objects. Description of objects.
Storage issues given the fact that we
are primarily a books and manuscripts
collection.
Access. Digital delivery.
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