48 · Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
“Our students engage in tasks related to arrangement and description, but only under the close supervision of
their archivist supervisors.”
“Percentage of time spent on arranging and describing manuscript collections varies for all categories, depending
on other immediate demands.”
“Rare Books &Special Collections: The Curator of Manuscripts has for many years been responsible for
Acquisitions and Collections Development for the Division and more recently has been the Head of the Division.
Osler Library of the History of Medicine Student Assistants: Archival Assistant during summer, 28 hours per week
winter/fall/spring, 10 hours per week, 25%.”
“Records of our manuscripts and special collections are included in the New York State Library’s online catalog.
For the purpose of this survey we included time spent on adding information to the online catalog as time spent
adding information to the Web.”
“Special collections are in 5 different buildings on campus, each with its own reference room and stacks. Thus,
the number of staff is dispersed.”
“Student assistants/archives assistants: students from the Master of Archives Program, School of Library Archival
and Information Studies. Sometimes also project archivists (grant-funded).”
“Student Interns and contract staff are hired for specific projects.”
“The full-time Project Archivist is being paid with soft money and is only working on a small subset of the
Manuscripts collection. The student assistants spend their time refoldering and reboxing collections, creating
folder inventories, and writing brief descriptions of the materials on which they are working. Their work is helping
us implement ‘More Product, Less Process’ but they are not arranging and describing manuscript collections in
the traditional sense of the work. The Library Technical Services staff perform the majority of the arrangement
and description that takes place with the manuscript collections. Three of these staff arrange and describe. Two
work together as a team (one primarily processes while the other does the EAD). These Library Technical Services
staff are still learning how to process manuscript collections after spending many years only working with library
material. They are doing a great job but training is ongoing.”
“The majority of our positions have multiple responsibilities, among them manuscript collection processing and
adding web content. The latter takes at least two forms: creating and loading finding aids in html format and
creating database records in CONTENTdm. We are currently running a grant-funded project that employs a .5 FTE
supervisor and 1.5 FTE student assistants, all of whom are 100% adding CONTENTdm records. Processing and
adding content have highly variable time requirements, of course. Processing may grind for weeks with a resulting
data load that takes a couple of hours on the other hand, we often are adding online data in real-time.”
“The Project Archivist spends 100% of her time on arrangement and description, but she is grant-funded and can
only work on two specific large collections. Her efforts are certainly worthwhile, but she can not contribute to the
larger arrangement and description efforts.”
“The staffing totals do not include one professional and four support staff who work in the archives storage
facility, which also doubles as a book depository and records centre.”
“There are librarians and staff working on archives within the Libraries but outside of Special Collections.
Responses here do not reflect this work.”
“Our students engage in tasks related to arrangement and description, but only under the close supervision of
their archivist supervisors.”
“Percentage of time spent on arranging and describing manuscript collections varies for all categories, depending
on other immediate demands.”
“Rare Books &Special Collections: The Curator of Manuscripts has for many years been responsible for
Acquisitions and Collections Development for the Division and more recently has been the Head of the Division.
Osler Library of the History of Medicine Student Assistants: Archival Assistant during summer, 28 hours per week
winter/fall/spring, 10 hours per week, 25%.”
“Records of our manuscripts and special collections are included in the New York State Library’s online catalog.
For the purpose of this survey we included time spent on adding information to the online catalog as time spent
adding information to the Web.”
“Special collections are in 5 different buildings on campus, each with its own reference room and stacks. Thus,
the number of staff is dispersed.”
“Student assistants/archives assistants: students from the Master of Archives Program, School of Library Archival
and Information Studies. Sometimes also project archivists (grant-funded).”
“Student Interns and contract staff are hired for specific projects.”
“The full-time Project Archivist is being paid with soft money and is only working on a small subset of the
Manuscripts collection. The student assistants spend their time refoldering and reboxing collections, creating
folder inventories, and writing brief descriptions of the materials on which they are working. Their work is helping
us implement ‘More Product, Less Process’ but they are not arranging and describing manuscript collections in
the traditional sense of the work. The Library Technical Services staff perform the majority of the arrangement
and description that takes place with the manuscript collections. Three of these staff arrange and describe. Two
work together as a team (one primarily processes while the other does the EAD). These Library Technical Services
staff are still learning how to process manuscript collections after spending many years only working with library
material. They are doing a great job but training is ongoing.”
“The majority of our positions have multiple responsibilities, among them manuscript collection processing and
adding web content. The latter takes at least two forms: creating and loading finding aids in html format and
creating database records in CONTENTdm. We are currently running a grant-funded project that employs a .5 FTE
supervisor and 1.5 FTE student assistants, all of whom are 100% adding CONTENTdm records. Processing and
adding content have highly variable time requirements, of course. Processing may grind for weeks with a resulting
data load that takes a couple of hours on the other hand, we often are adding online data in real-time.”
“The Project Archivist spends 100% of her time on arrangement and description, but she is grant-funded and can
only work on two specific large collections. Her efforts are certainly worthwhile, but she can not contribute to the
larger arrangement and description efforts.”
“The staffing totals do not include one professional and four support staff who work in the archives storage
facility, which also doubles as a book depository and records centre.”
“There are librarians and staff working on archives within the Libraries but outside of Special Collections.
Responses here do not reflect this work.”
