Basic principles and guidance

The purpose of accessioning is to gain physical and intellectual control over the collection and to make it available for research wherever possible; additionally, specific statistics gathered during the accessioning process allow us to report annually on the growth of our holdings.

Current practice at the Schlesinger is for curators to do all communicating with donors before material arrives at the Library. They should have an idea of what is coming when, and hopefully they may have sent a copy of our container list spreadsheet for the donor to fill out. Curators are asked to fill out an accessioning worksheet that asks for some information about restrictions, whether they expect more accruals, etc. (Eventual goal: move this information-sharing process away from paper forms). Curators don't always pass on all the information archivists may need to make accessioning decisions; thus archivists should be in the habit of reading through any available paperwork or correspondence and/or having a conversation with the curator about the material if they need more information. Current record keeping practice is for deeds of gift to be scanned and added to DOG tracker. For new collections this happens about once a quarter; so probably will not have occurred at the time of accessioning - so archivists should ask curators for a copy of the deed if they need it.

The point of reviewing any available documentation prior to accessioning is to understand what the collection’s likely research value is, to familiarize oneself with the creator and her career and life, and to be alert to the kinds of materials to expect. This will all add in creating the bibliographic record, thinking about closures, and prioritizing processing work on the collection.

The Harvard Joint Processing Guidelines contain suggested accessioning practices, at Schlesinger we will do our best to accession material to an optimal level. One of the key points of the Joint Processing Guidelines is that "good accessioning can result in collections processed to a Level 1."

We strive to open as many collections as possible to research upon accessioning.

Level 1 processed collections are:

all small As and Bs, most described only in a bibliographic record
collections of any size with no restrictions, and materials in folders that have a (however basic) online container list

Past practice at Schlesinger has been to open smaller (less than 5 LF) collections to research with only a bibliographic record for description. Beginning in 2019, we shifted our practices to the following approach:

We should attempt to make an online container list/finding aid for any new accession that is open to research and larger than a small A or B. This will help us going forward as our systems shift and change and collections that are open to research become requestable to researchers through Aeon (using an ASpace resource record and inventory). See the separate page on accessioning work with new collections for further specific guidance.

Recent examples of collections with online container lists made upon accessioning include Dorothy Frauenhofer papers, Jennifer Finney Boylan papers, Ana Maria Simo papers.

Summer/Fall 2020 update: we will create finding aids for all small As and Bs going forward.

Reasons to close collections to research on accession:

Deed of gift restricts use
Material is too fragile, dirty, etc. and needs conservation before use (requires processing for use)
Material is too messy - could not be adequately served to researcher in reading room (requires processing for use
Collection is too large to adequately create a container list at point of accession (consider this as future student project if possible)
Material appears to have potentially restricted material (student records, lawyer/client privilege, third party privacy) and time cannot be taken at accessioning to determine more carefully what might have issues

Collections that are closed to research until processed may still benefit from the creation of a container list - in this case, it's the future archivist we are helping. As larger collections come in, and the space we have in which to process is shrinking, we should record as much information as possible at the point of accession.

Recent example of this are the two Cyril Means container lists on G.