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

Hackbart-Dean, Pam; Slomba, Elizabeth

76 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
The Impact of Online Access on Processing Decisions
11. Please briefly describe how providing online access to manuscript and archival collections has
affected decisions about processing these materials, including decisions about the level of
processing, how materials are arranged and described, at what point in processing you decide to
use online access methods, etc. N=69
Impact of marking up finding aids in EAD N=66
Adherence to professional standard, finding aids contain standardized fields of information, searchability, XML based
preservation of information on collections.
All collections are marked up in EAD. It forms the base for all final finding aid products and cataloging. It is an
integrated part of processing so has no specific bearing on processing.
All new fully processed collections are in EAD.
All processed finding aids are marked up in EAD to create searchable records. This often drives a deeper description,
with more descriptive scope and content notes and folder headings.
At this time, there is little impact as EAD is handled by our digital library department.
Because of the expense of doing the markup, we are more rigorous in our analysis of the level of processing.
Considerable.
Created uniformity in processing collections (i.e., Series) and in writing finding aids.
Does not impact processing decisions it’s simply a different way of doing what we did before.
Done for all fonds.
EAD markup has helped us to keep our finding aids in compliance with international standards, and helped to make sure
that the information that a researcher needs is found within the finding aid. We have continued to revise our finding aid
manual to ensure compliance with the content required by EAD and DACS. We are now authoring our smaller finding
aids directly into EAD. Standards of arrangement and description have not been affected, except in minor ways.
EAD markup has slowed production of finding aids and somewhat altered their visual presentation.
Greater dissemination require clear arrangement and description so as not to confuse reference staff and/or users.
Has allowed us to create much more basic OCLC records that link to the EAD.
Has made us more aware of the shortcomings of some finding aids, has helped us to standardize finding aids, within our
institution as well as with respect to other institutions in the statewide resource to which we contribute.
Has serious staffing implications. Constant turn over requires training resources.
I’m unclear what you are asking: mark up is a means to an end and ensues from a processing decision, not vice versa.
Increases overall processing time. A number of minimally processed collections have not yet been marked up.
Little or no impact on processing decisions.
Making them accessible online and changing the way in which finding aids are created and produced.

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

Extracted Text (may have errors)

76 · Survey Results: Survey Questions And Responses
The Impact of Online Access on Processing Decisions
11. Please briefly describe how providing online access to manuscript and archival collections has
affected decisions about processing these materials, including decisions about the level of
processing, how materials are arranged and described, at what point in processing you decide to
use online access methods, etc. N=69
Impact of marking up finding aids in EAD N=66
Adherence to professional standard, finding aids contain standardized fields of information, searchability, XML based
preservation of information on collections.
All collections are marked up in EAD. It forms the base for all final finding aid products and cataloging. It is an
integrated part of processing so has no specific bearing on processing.
All new fully processed collections are in EAD.
All processed finding aids are marked up in EAD to create searchable records. This often drives a deeper description,
with more descriptive scope and content notes and folder headings.
At this time, there is little impact as EAD is handled by our digital library department.
Because of the expense of doing the markup, we are more rigorous in our analysis of the level of processing.
Considerable.
Created uniformity in processing collections (i.e., Series) and in writing finding aids.
Does not impact processing decisions it’s simply a different way of doing what we did before.
Done for all fonds.
EAD markup has helped us to keep our finding aids in compliance with international standards, and helped to make sure
that the information that a researcher needs is found within the finding aid. We have continued to revise our finding aid
manual to ensure compliance with the content required by EAD and DACS. We are now authoring our smaller finding
aids directly into EAD. Standards of arrangement and description have not been affected, except in minor ways.
EAD markup has slowed production of finding aids and somewhat altered their visual presentation.
Greater dissemination require clear arrangement and description so as not to confuse reference staff and/or users.
Has allowed us to create much more basic OCLC records that link to the EAD.
Has made us more aware of the shortcomings of some finding aids, has helped us to standardize finding aids, within our
institution as well as with respect to other institutions in the statewide resource to which we contribute.
Has serious staffing implications. Constant turn over requires training resources.
I’m unclear what you are asking: mark up is a means to an end and ensues from a processing decision, not vice versa.
Increases overall processing time. A number of minimally processed collections have not yet been marked up.
Little or no impact on processing decisions.
Making them accessible online and changing the way in which finding aids are created and produced.

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SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts &Archives · 75
There needs to be enough information for a researcher to determine whether or not they should take a look at the
materials in the collection. We want to provide enough keyword terms in the descriptions as well as appropriate subject
tracings to help the researcher decide whether or not it is worthwhile to look at the materials. We don’t aim to do the
research for the researcher.
They can use them with relatively minimal descriptions, size of collection and its variety in terms of formats, time
span and subject matter covers all matter in determining whether they will need more description in order to use the
collection effectively. It’s a judgment call based in part on experience of researchers and reference archivists.
This decision is based on the contents of the collection. The more homogeneous the collection is, the more likely we are
to work at series level. We also consider whether there are significant materials that need to be highlighted at an item
level. Finally, we consider the likely users and how we anticipate that they might use the collection.
This is, of course, an art rather than a science. We have to make our best guess based on our own research experience,
our observation of researchers, and our knowledge of our collections. We also have to consider the resources we have
available and whether it is more important to provide some level of access to all of our collections or a more detailed
level of access to only a few collections.
Usually the content of the collection is the main factor in determining the processing level for researcher discoverability.
We have looked at the size of the collection and its content in determining the minimal level of description.
We apply the factors checked above.
We base our choices on the experience and comments of previous researchers.
We base this on professional judgment based on our experiences in working with researchers and collections, and it is
becoming a more and more important consideration in our description decisions.
We describe routinely at three levels: fonds, series, folder. Our primary users are graduate and undergraduate students
whose research must be done in a limited time period we provide detailed finding aids to assist them to pinpoint
material of interest and eliminate material from consideration.
We evaluate each collection based on past experience combined with whatever institutional decisions may affect the
materials and our own professional judgment. However, we are responsive to feedback on user needs from our public
services and curatorial staffs and will reprocess to meet these needs.
We evaluate how many resources it will take to arrange and describe at a certain level at the same time we ask what
is the potential research value to our primary users, or how important is the collection in documenting university history
and culture.
We generally use our collective wisdom and experience balanced against available resources and perceived usefulness.
We then try to refine this by observing how a collection is used and by asking readers what they find useful, what
recommendation they have for better exposing content, soliciting comments on and corrections to finding aids, etc.
We provide a minimal collection-level description based on DACS minimum requirements beyond that, it’s a
combination of instinct and educated guess. I’m not sure there are “rules” that can usefully be applied to answer this
question.
We review the collection and know how our users would likely need to have the collection described.
We try to put ourselves in the researcher’s position.

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

SPEC Kit 314: Processing Decisions for Manuscripts &Archives · 77
Marking finding aids up in EAD and making finding aids available online has impressed on us the need for improved
descriptive practices. It has led directly to our implementation of DACS. Finding aids are marked up in EAD as part of the
creation of descriptions.
Marking up finding aids in EAD does not impact how we process. (5 responses)
Marking up finding aids in EAD is only used in the most exceptional cases, and normally only when we either have
special funding or when we are going to be digitizing material that needs to be linked to the finding aid. Otherwise,
EAD is just short of a criminal waste of time.
Nearly all of our complete finding aids have been marked up in EAD (these generally include standard front matter plus
a container list). Our “small” collections, which generally are described only by a MARC record (but often an item-level
one) have not been marked up in EAD, and are accessible only through our library catalog.
No impact yet we are in the process of trying to routinize EAD encoding through the use of Archivists’ Toolkit and a site
created by the computing department of the library.
Not much because it’s just a different format for our finding aids. Doesn’t really affect our processing decisions all that
much.
Now collect/write more descriptive information and make it available to researcher—conditions of use, conditions of
access most finding aids are built gradually as information is gathered about unprocessed collections, or parts of a
collection are processed.
Online access with minimal finding aids still provides higher level of access than paper-based finding aids of more detail.
Internal and national uniformity of description provides greater collocation of archival materials with related materials
locally and globally.
Our goal is to work toward federated searching within/across institutions using common and “controlled” language. As
this is still in our future we expect it to assist us in finding commonalities across similar collections.
Our highest current priority is to prepare core records for previously undescribed resources, though we are preparing
EAD-encoded finding aids, if to a lesser extent. EAD-encoded finding aids are somewhat labor intensive and our effort
is to prepare core records and display them for searching in a Special Collections database.
Our pre-EAD finding aids were pretty close to post-EAD, so we didn’t have to make many changes directly related to
EAD encoding. Conceptually, we make EAD encoding reflect our decisions rather than decide based on EAD encoding.
We haven’t had any real problems with this seems always to be a way.
Part of the processing workflow.
Pilot project encoding Special Collections finding aids using OhioLink EAD template running 2008–2011 impact
assessed upon completion.
Producing an EAD finding aid for the Web has long been one of the primary goals of our processing operation. EAD has
been integrated for so long into our processing operations that there is no one on our staff anymore who can describe
what processing was like before EAD.
Providing online access to manuscript and archival collections has not affected decisions about processing, including
decisions about the level of processing.
Required training for personnel before can this can be put into action.
Soon to be implemented here.

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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