Processing Best Practices

Baseline level access or finding the ‘golden minimum’

Before the onset of processing, ask yourself questions such as, “What do I need to do to this collection to make it usable?” or “Where are the high value materials in this collection?” or “What types of material in this collection are uniform enough that series level description makes the most sense?” or “Can I reuse donor description or boxes or folders?” or “What benefits am I providing by listing all folder titles?” Providing good enough arrangement and description is a matter of judgment and will vary depending on the size, scope, and complexity of the collection. Finding the "golden minimum" for processing is performing the appropriate amount of work necessary to make the collection usable. Usable means that a researcher a) knows we have a collection, b) knows the language of the materials, its size, scope, and accessibility (DACS single-level minimum requirements), c) can reasonably pinpoint a box or two of interest, and d) can handle the materials without too much trouble.

Collections that are well organized (intellectually and/or physically) into discernible series of similar material are good candidates for finding aids with series level description. Collections that lack any discernible order should not be over-handled but rather roughly aggregated and described as holistically as possible or simply described as is. Rather than spend copious amounts of time sorting a mixed contents folder into various folders of like material, a perfectly usable folder title such as, “Joe Smith correspondence, clippings, and other materials,” is sufficient. Small collections or collections with less research value might only need a collection level description. Donor lists and dealer inventories should almost always be used as a basis for description.

Archival arrangement

Archival arrangement is a noun not a verb. Archaeology is an appropriate metaphor for archival arrangement. It is the archivist’s role to make sense of and describe the arrangement (noun) of the material not to arrange (verb) the material. Archivists must respect the order of materials as the creator kept them. This is both a theoretical and practical concern. Theoretically, archives, in contradistinction to library materials, offer value in both their context and their content. Context includes the relationships between or arrangement of files and is a reflection of the activities of the creator. Practically speaking, physical arrangement and sorting are very time-intensive activities that in our digital environments prove unnecessary. 

Internal Tagging

ArchivesSpace outputs data in EAD. This structured data coupled with the full text search capabilities of our discovery systems make internal tagging unnecessary. If you want a person, corporate body, subject, location, genre, or form to be authorized, structured, and associated with a unit of description, the best place for that information is the Agent or Subject modules of ArchivesSpace. 

Avoid using such tags as <persname>, <corpname>, <genreform>, etc... within an element or ArchivesSpace data field. 

Houghton uses internal tags for styling and linking, such as <emph render="italics">, <title>, or <extref xlink:href="http://" >. 

Title and Creators

DACS compliant titles at all levels of description do not include the authorized creator. Rule 2.3 in DACS states that creator, if known, and not inherited from a larger aggregate description, should be described in the title in natural language format followed by a format designation. If it makes sense to list names by last name, that’s fine as well. 

“John Smith correspondence” vs. “Smith, John, 1917-1977. John Smith correspondence.” 

In order to provide the highest level of detail, one could enter “Smith, John, 1917-1977” as an agent associated with the unit of description, “John Smith correspondence.” Authority work is time-intensive and value-added. Whether or not to add Agents and Subjects beyond the collection level should always be considered strategically and thoughtfully; this is a rare practice at Houghton.

Box and Folders versus <unitid>

Past practice at Houghton Library did not include box and folder identifications with units of description. Instead each unit of description was assigned a consecutive number using <unitid>. This system is no longer in use, though some collections that continue to receive accruals include <unitid>s. However, all Houghton collections must include top containers (the box or oversized folder in which it is situated) and their locations must be noted in ArchivesSpace. Lower level folders can be included as well. 

Archival Inheritance and Repetition of Description

One of the benefits of archival arrangement is that description of larger aggregates can take some of the burden off of smaller units. In other words, we don’t need to repeat ourselves. Much of the context and meaning for each unit of description is derived from our larger collection level, series level, and/or file level descriptions.  

Take for example, the fictional Jordan Jacobs papers which have no restrictions/are open for research and have the accession number 2017M-202. The papers are 25 linear feet and contain mostly correspondence and compositions. 

The papers are arranged in two series: Correspondence and Compositions. 

For each series description, we don’t need to repeat Jordan Jacobs as the creator nor do we need to repeat the accession number or that the collection is open for research. Those pieces of information are inherited from our collection description. 

However, we don’t simply have “papers” as a format in our two series, we have more specific format types, correspondence and compositions. The format types need to be described. 

The correspondence series is 10 linear feet. The compositions series is 15 linear feet. Extent is not the same at the series level as at the collection level and so we should include an extent statement at the series. 

Meeting the DACS requirements for multi-level description, the series title would be:

Correspondence, 1990s (10 linear feet)

Going further, a file within the correspondence series is with Jordan’s agent, Bob Black. There are 10 folders of correspondence with Black. We don’t need to repeat the collection title, series title, restriction information or accession information, as those are all the same.