I. Background and basics

Note: wherever "Houghton" is referenced, it should be understood to include all curatorial departments, unless practices differ and are noted separately.

Since July 1, 2006, the Technical Services - Manuscript Section has made accession records in MARC format only for all curatorial departments. The previous database, HMA (Houghton Manuscript Accessions, an Access database created for the Manuscript Department ca. 1999 from the original MARC-based BibBase), was frozen at that time. (Bonnie Salt has since completed a project to create MARC records for all earlier materials appearing only in HMA.) Until approximately 2006, the Harvard Theatre Collection maintained separate accessioning practices and files; these are not covered in detail here but will be cited below where necessary for clarification. Until July 1, 2017, Houghton accessioning years and university fiscal years were at variance, with accessioning years being a year behind fiscal years. On July 1, 2017, the university's fiscal year 2018 began; so, too, did Houghton's accessioning year. Because of this, Houghton's accessions do not show an accessioning year 2017.

Since April 1, 2011, preliminary box lists for accessioned collections have been candidates for posting to OASIS (pending curatorial review); a project to convert legacy box lists in Word and other formats to EAD is desirable for the future.

Every item or collection entering Houghton receives a MARC accession record; collections of approximately two or more boxes may, additionally, receive a box list in EAD. Both of these records are derivative of the rules for full, standards-compliant Houghton cataloging of single items and collections. This document, therefore, defers to departmental cataloging manuals but for convenience presents guidelines below.

The standard for an accession record is the single-level minimum set of DACS requirements plus additional Houghton requirements. In the guidelines below for bibliographic and holdings records, the source of the requirement is noted either with the DACS section reference number or as "Houghton".

Accessioning is here defined as receiving, documenting, and storing materials immediately upon their receipt by Houghton in order to establish basic physical, administrative, and intellectual control. These actions also safeguard the legal and financial assets of the University. The entire process of receipt, accessioning, and shelving should take place as soon as possible to capture the ephemeral circumstances surrounding the receipt, to establish and maintain strong donor relations, and to provide description of new material for staff and research purposes. The data required to create an accession record comes from the acquiring curator and from what is most apparent from the item or collection itself. For large collections, content listing and rehousing may take longer, and the paperwork attending purchase and transfer may be more complex. A basic HOLLIS record with an assigned accession number should be created immediately, however.

It is the curator's role to set any necessary restrictions on incoming items and collections (according to the Houghton Library restrictions policy document); the default assumption is that material is open for research. In most cases, any material to be restricted will have been separated out by curatorial staff; in rare cases, usually with larger collections, the curator may request that the accessioner locate physically any material meeting certain expected restriction criteria so that they may be stored separately (usually in the vault).

In recent years accessioning has become a backlog-preventive measure. The accessioner can siphon off appropriate incoming single items to catalog into catchall collections as appropriate; as of this writing, the accessioning archivist manages the catchall master list, creation of MARC records for catchall items, and insertion of such items into catchall finding aids. Catchall collections are collections with finding aids to which additions are made when new relevant material is received and are therefore "open"; the best known examples are the Autograph File and Theater Autograph File, but as of this writing there are approximately 130 catchalls in all. Catchall items are usually single items or very small gatherings of items that warrant no more description than a single entry in a finding aid and that fit logically within the scope of the finding aid in question.

As of this writing, no departmental workflow is in place for handling born-digital material or obsolete formats beyond basic housing and shelving; this situation will change as efforts across Harvard and beyond suggest effective workflows.