120 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
based on analyzing up front what’s required by a given collection (or parts thereof) for anticipated use and proceeding
accordingly.
Lack of permanent staff dedicated to processing, make it hard to be effective in dealing with backlog.
Our department has gone through a number of changes in the last year, reorganization and turnover in staff, including a
new department head, and plans for a physical move of the library. Currently, our faculty position ,which should oversee
manuscript processing, is vacant. Our Archivist position is also vacant.
Our Department has made a concerted effort to focus on processing collections during the past 5 1/2 years. 1.5 staff
members dedicated to processing have processed 106 collections in the past 5 1/2 years. We have box lists created
for all of our collections, make records for most of our collections and a Web guide that lists all of our manuscript
collections. We find many patrons discover our collections through Web guide entries via Google searching.
Our responses reflect priorities as they actually play out. We may formally identify a particular collection as “top priority”
for processing but a lower priority collection may get attention first because it is suitable for an intern to work with, is
smaller, or other.
See our Web site at www.utoronto.library/utarms for more information.
Since 1986, the Manuscript Unit in the University of Delaware Library Special Collection Department has grown
from one professional manuscript librarian and one support staff who assisted with processing, to three professional
manuscript librarians, three support staff, and three .5 FTE graduate assistants. After nearly 15 years of HTML finding
aids as chief access tools to manuscript collections, EAD xml is being used for XHTML, PDF, and MARC output (as well
as Dublin Core for current digital collection projects). Arrangement tasks of processing are challenged by the need for
stronger, independent decision-making skills and experience levels of non-professional staff. The supervising librarian
is stretched with responsibility for overseeing junior professional staff in developing processing skills and overseeing
a second librarian establishing EAD and DACS standards. Description tasks are progressing but are dependent on the
Library Systems Department which has its own priorities and pressing schedules. The ‘enlightened vision’ of a powerful
federated search engine that will harvest the universe of Encoded Archival Description is critical to the justification of all
this hard work. EAD is more than 10 years old. Applying descriptive standards is an integral part of processing, but the
process has become a bottleneck without easier exploitation of all this powerful metadata. In addition to the need for
universal federated searching, there is a great need for integrated acquisition/description/circulation modules such as
the developing Archival Toolkit or Aeon system. These tools will help processing become a less isolated step in collection
management.
Since these collections all are unique, so much depends on the specific situation. For us, processing tends to be fluid
we may do it minimally, then go back and do it more fully if demand or preservation needs warrant it. For most
collections, we try to do it minimally as soon after acquisition as possible, following the Meissner/Greene mantra of
more product/less process(ing).
Student assistants are hired to process collections. We are heavily dependent on students, especially work study
students.
The acquisition of manuscripts and archival material is over 80% by donation and this factor puts immense pressure on
processing practices.
The years 2006–2008 have been a time of change and growth within the Special Collections Research Center. In 2005,
the Center initiated and in 2006 completed a project of converting dated finding aids into online EAD documents,
more than tripling the total number of online guides to collections. We have very few collections for which there are
no catalog records or finding aids online. We estimate that about 20% of our total collections need further processing
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