Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives, SPEC Kit 314 (November 2009)

Hackbart-Dean, Pam; Slomba, Elizabeth

SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts &Archives · 115
Challenge 1: Challenge 2: Challenge 3:
Level of processing to implement Processing Electronic records
Limited human resources for the volume
of material to be processed.
Limited space for processing. Handling digital formats and/or older
electronic data.
Limited staff is the number one
challenge. We simply don’t have enough
people to do the required processing.
More donors are offering to donate
money to pay for student processing
which is one way to ensure more timely
processing.
Slower turnaround time. Few staff/
student assistants to process means
slower turnaround time, bigger backlog
and greater need for appropriate
prioritizing.
Cost of preservation for damaged
collections or different formats can be
an obstacle.
Limited staff resources. Competing processing priorities. There
are four major collection areas but
only one processing dept. Deciding
what gets done first requires frequent
communication with the curators.
Timely receipt of: accession paperwork
(e.g. Deed of gift), questions from
processing staff about how curators
want the collections processed, and
timely review of the final EAD.
Locating grant funding for digitization
projects.
Integrating students and part-time para-
professionals into processing work-flow.
Determining cost effective solutions for
preparing collections processed prior to
1970 for digitization.
Maintaining priority of public service
and instruction. Although we are
proud that this is our core mission and
highest priority, it makes it challenging
to put higher priority on processing
and cataloging and, obviously, the two
functions go hand in hand.
Digitization. The expectation that we
will or should digitize our collections
and the mandate to complete a major
digitization project does take time and
energy away from processing. It’s not
a trade-off that I’m very comfortable
making as I feel that processing first is
more important in serving our users’
needs.
Donor expectations. Although we are
careful not to make promises about
how soon or when we might complete
processing, there is a huge amount
of donor pressure to not only process
immediately, but also to digitize the
collections they’ve donated (see
Challenge 2).
Making a commitment to process to
the folder level, and then after it was
finished, to decide that series level
would have been sufficient.
Minimal staffing. Accumulated backlog.
Minimizing the time given to processing
and producing worthwhile finding aids
at adequate levels.
Developing staff expertise to process
and preserve electronic formats.
Accepting new materials while reducing
backlogs.
Negotiations with donors over terms of
acquisition and access to collections,
especially in cases where some parts
may need to be closed for a certain
period of time. The challenge is how
to process effectively to identify the
problem areas of the collection.
Weeding collections — deciding what
to keep, and hence what needs to be
processed.
Staffing — recruiting and retaining
appropriate levels of staff, especially
in times of budget crunches when the
significance of Special Collections is not
always apparent to library and university
administration.

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SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives (November 2009) resources

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SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts &Archives · 115
Challenge 1: Challenge 2: Challenge 3:
Level of processing to implement Processing Electronic records
Limited human resources for the volume
of material to be processed.
Limited space for processing. Handling digital formats and/or older
electronic data.
Limited staff is the number one
challenge. We simply don’t have enough
people to do the required processing.
More donors are offering to donate
money to pay for student processing
which is one way to ensure more timely
processing.
Slower turnaround time. Few staff/
student assistants to process means
slower turnaround time, bigger backlog
and greater need for appropriate
prioritizing.
Cost of preservation for damaged
collections or different formats can be
an obstacle.
Limited staff resources. Competing processing priorities. There
are four major collection areas but
only one processing dept. Deciding
what gets done first requires frequent
communication with the curators.
Timely receipt of: accession paperwork
(e.g. Deed of gift), questions from
processing staff about how curators
want the collections processed, and
timely review of the final EAD.
Locating grant funding for digitization
projects.
Integrating students and part-time para-
professionals into processing work-flow.
Determining cost effective solutions for
preparing collections processed prior to
1970 for digitization.
Maintaining priority of public service
and instruction. Although we are
proud that this is our core mission and
highest priority, it makes it challenging
to put higher priority on processing
and cataloging and, obviously, the two
functions go hand in hand.
Digitization. The expectation that we
will or should digitize our collections
and the mandate to complete a major
digitization project does take time and
energy away from processing. It’s not
a trade-off that I’m very comfortable
making as I feel that processing first is
more important in serving our users’
needs.
Donor expectations. Although we are
careful not to make promises about
how soon or when we might complete
processing, there is a huge amount
of donor pressure to not only process
immediately, but also to digitize the
collections they’ve donated (see
Challenge 2).
Making a commitment to process to
the folder level, and then after it was
finished, to decide that series level
would have been sufficient.
Minimal staffing. Accumulated backlog.
Minimizing the time given to processing
and producing worthwhile finding aids
at adequate levels.
Developing staff expertise to process
and preserve electronic formats.
Accepting new materials while reducing
backlogs.
Negotiations with donors over terms of
acquisition and access to collections,
especially in cases where some parts
may need to be closed for a certain
period of time. The challenge is how
to process effectively to identify the
problem areas of the collection.
Weeding collections — deciding what
to keep, and hence what needs to be
processed.
Staffing — recruiting and retaining
appropriate levels of staff, especially
in times of budget crunches when the
significance of Special Collections is not
always apparent to library and university
administration.

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114 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
Challenge 1: Challenge 2: Challenge 3:
It is difficult not to feel discouraged and
overwhelmed by a backlog that grows
each year. I am very interested in new
tools and approaches for turning this
around. I hope that big backlogs will
become less accepted, and, even better,
that we will substantially reduce them in
the fairly near future.
Poor recordkeeping, especially
documentation of ownership and
appraisal decisions, is a daily challenge.
Anticipating the long-term
consequences for myself, present
colleagues, and successors, of my
decisions is another major challenge.
I learn each day by living with the
consequences of decisions made by
my own colleagues and predecessors,
which helps, but this is very difficult. I try
to compensate by making one radical
departure from past practice: I strive
to document my decisions, to make
it easier for successors to understand
them, and modify them in the future if
necessary.
Lack of adequate funding. Student assistants cannot sometimes
finish processing project before needing
to leave the job due to graduation or
other circumstances.
Lack of adequate space (stack space
and processing space).
Lack of enough staff who are
knowledgable about archival processing.
Lack of funding for archival supplies
(preservation supplies).
Lack of space for growth of collections.
Lack of information about collections
in the backlog to be able to make
processing priority decisions. Some
collections have been in the backlog
for 30+ years. The control folder may
or may not contain any clue as to what
the collection contains or the topics it
addresses, and even if it does, since our
accessioning and processing database
only began about 15 years ago, any
“browsing” of accession description
requires physically reviewing each
folder. Further, the quality and quantity
of information about an accession in
the database varies widely. In general,
not having a good handle on the size,
character, and content of our backlog.
Need more people to process and space
for them and collections.
Uncertain legal status of some
collections—indefinite loans and
deposits that have been hear 50+ years,
for example. Spend time processing
something we don’t “technically” own?
Lack of staff. Space for processing and housing
collections.
Moving to an automated on-line system
of processing collections and creating
EADS.
Large political archives continue to be
an issue due to the space requirements,
restrictions on use, and cost for
processing.
Access to and preservation of born
digital materials are presenting
increasing challenges.
Preservation costs.

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SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives (November 2009) resources

116 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
Challenge 1: Challenge 2: Challenge 3:
Not enough staff compared to backlogs. No content management system for
photographic holdings.
Likely budget cuts impacting staff and
archival supplies.
One challenge is deciding on physical vs.
Intellectual arrangement of a collection
when materials are made with a variety
of media and deviate significantly in
size.
Another challenge is deciding to what
level we will process a collection. We
understand the value of “More Product,
Less Process.” We do use this theory as
we process some collections. However,
we feel we need to spend more time
and process some collections in more
detail to make them more usable for
patrons. This is a fine line and we find it
challenging to make the decisions.
Some collections come with archival
issues attached. For instance, a
collection that might otherwise assume
lesser importance may be moved up in
the queue for preservation reasons.
Overcoming traditions and past
institutional practices that hinder the
development of new directions and
workflows.
Electronic media, reformatting, and
remaining current on technology.
Recovering or searching for
documentation on collections, such as
Deeds of Gift.
Overwhelmed and overworked staff. Pre-appraisal needs for backlogged
collections.
Storage needs for current collection
levels.
Preservation issues—what to do with
endangered materials or obsolete
formats.
Electronic records—how to make
them accessible for current and future
researchers.
Digitization—balancing processing
materials with the demand for digital
copies.
Resources and staffing dedicated to
processing.
In approximately 3 years or so we will
be moving into a new special collections
building, so inventorying, organizing and
preparing collections for the move is a
challenge at the moment.
Currently, space limitations is a major
problem and requires us to disperse our
collections to multiple locations this
should be resolved in several years with
the completion of our new building.
Retrofitting hundreds of finding aids
created generations ago so they can
be encoded online in EAD, a task that
potentially involves physical reworking
of collections and for this reason
and others slows the processing of
a growing backlog of unprocessed
material.
Coping with the backlog of unprocessed
material by resorting to minimal
or lower-level processing of some
collections or parts of collections.
Stabilizing, migrating, describing, and
maintaining born-digital collection
material, the new frontier portending
major changes in the method and
prioritizing of manuscript processing.
Severely unorganized collections. Need for staff with special skills to
process manuscript and archival
collections.
Difficulty to estimate the future use of
some collections.
Space, staff. Volume of backlog. Knowledge of foreign language and
subjects the staff are unfamiliar.
Staffing. Funding. Collaboration.

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Page 7Survey Results click to expand contents

Page 123Representative Documents click to expand contents

Page 125Job Description of Processing Decision Maker click to expand contents

Page 129Job Descriptions of Processing Staff click to expand contents

Page 133Processing Policy click to expand contents

Page 137Processing Procedures Manuals click to expand contents

Page 143Processing Worksheets click to expand contents

Page 151Procedures for Prioritizing Processing click to expand contents

Page 155Collecting Processing Statistics click to expand contents

Page 159Sample Statistics Reports click to expand contents

Page 163Selected Resources click to expand contents

SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives (November 2009) resources

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SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives (November 2009) resources

SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives (November 2009) resources