As the world becomes increasingly faster in pace and larger in scale, new technological advances are being developed to keep track of the grand amount of records, supplies, and movements that make modern Western life possible. Perhaps one of the most promising—and equally threatening—is radio frequency identification (RFID), which utilizes the basic principles of reception and transmission of radio waves with every smaller microchips to easily identify and monitor large numbers of items in a short amount of time. Such technology has already been adopted by entities such as the U.S. Department of Defense and Wal-Mart to track their inventories, thereby ensuring that theft, misplacement, or loss of goods either does not take place or can be found quickly if such an occurrence does happen. The promise of this technology for archival professionals is that the inventorying and tracking of large amounts of archival materials, especially those in large archival collections for which item-level listing may be impossible. While there are a number of questions as to the beneficence for archives, RFID technology could be in the near future the way that many large and medium archives track their archival collections in storage.
RFID is defined as “a generic term for a set of technologies that use radio frequency (RF) to communicate data (a central component of which is an identity—specifically, a unique number)” (Resource #1). RFID systems consist of three main parts: an RFID tag, a reader, and the software for the system. An RFID tag is a small microchip with a radio antenna; these chips have a memory capacity to store identification data about the item with which the tag is partnered. Such tags are “read” by individuals through radio communication with a reader—a device having an antenna, transmitter, receiver, microprocessor, and memory storage capability that can make a contactless communication with the antenna of RFID tags (a PDA is an example of a reader). There can be portable readers such as PDAs (for manual checks) or stationary readers (which look like external harddrives) that are positioned throughout a room, emitting a continuous flow of information from the tags to a computer. The software allows the reader to process the information received and stored from the tags in a manner and framework which will be understandable to humans (Resource #2).
There are three varieties of RFID tags: active, passive, and semi-active. Active tags contain a silicone chip with a basic radio communication system present (an antenna and receiver), as well as an “on-board power source” (most often a battery) which keeps the tag “active” in order to continually transmit data to a reader. The read distance for active tags can be 100 feet or more, depending on the design of the tag. This type of tag is perhaps the least acceptable for use in archives due to the presence of a power source which—in contact with papers—could pose a potential danger to paper-based archival items. All tags whose data is programmed by a reader are said to have been “created” by the reader; additionally, when a created tag has had its data associated with a particular item, the tag is said to be “commissioned” (Resource #3).
Passive tags are so labeled because they do not have batteries; rather, they receive power through their antenna from the reader and do not send information unless a reader’s signal activates the tag. Because there are no moving parts within this tag, they are expected to have very long life spans and capable of resistant extreme conditions. Experiments have shown passive tags can resist corrosion from chemicals and can function well even at temperatures as high as 400°F. Due to their endurance and inertness to materials, passive tags would serve as the most appropriate for use in archives (though their read distance is much shorter than active tags—anywhere from less than an inch to 30 feet). Semi-active tags use an on-board power supply to function for specialized purposes, while they can only transmit data by activation through the power of a reader. These tags can be read from a maximum distance of 100 feet (Resource #4).
RFID tags—like CDs—can be either read-only, write-once (R) or re-writable (RW). Read-only tags can have their memory programmed by the manufacturer or by the user once with the data for the item to be associated with each tag. While that is true in theory, in practice read-only tags can actually be re-programmed or re-written several times. Read-write tags (RW) can be read-write or reprogrammed anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times (sometimes even more). These are the most expensive type of tag to make; they are also the least technologically secure, and as such are perhaps the least recommended for use in archives. In the future as the technology improves and production costs decrease, RW tags may become more of an option for archives (Resource #5).
RFID readers come in many variations, depending on the designer of the system and the uses for the system. Also known as “interrogators” (because they interrogate the information from the tags), readers are considered as the “central nervous system" of the RFID hardware (Resource #6). Readers operate within a “read zone,” the radius within which the radio transmitters of the tags can be picked up by a reader. The reader transmits AC power from its power source through the antenna to the tags, with the result being a transfer of data from the tags’ microprocessors. There are two types of readers based on their interface communication connections to a computer: 1) serial readers, which must be connected to computer’s serial port utilizing a cable; 2) network readers, which can communicate with a computer used both a cable and a wireless connection (network readers are almost identical to wireless network readers for standard network connections). Readers are further divided in to handheld and stationary readers. Stationary readers can be mounted on walls, doorways, or even moving objects (fork lifts, moving shelves, etc.) that are within the read zone; stationary readers are less expansive than portable readers typically, yet they need external antennas added. One version of a stationary reader is a RFID tag printer, which is capable of printing combination bar code/RFID tag labels. Portable readers, most commonly PDAs, contain internal antennas and can be passed over the items in a continuous motion—without line of sight to the tags. Portable readers can also exist in a similar form to those used in grocery stores to inventory stock. Portable readers’ effectiveness depends on their antenna signal strength, their battery life, and the size of memory (Resource #7).
Currently, RFID tags are used mainly for tracking and for inventorying. Tracking purposes include sub-dermal tagging (medical, child tracking, and animal tracking), security access cards, an anti-theft mechanism for merchandise in stores, marathons, airline baggage tags, and EZ-Pass and FasTrak road passes for cities like Chicago. Information about the item or person being tagged can be stored in the chip and retrieved through scanning. For inventorying, Wal-Mart, Target, and the U.S. Department of Defense are the first to use RFID tag inventories on a large scale. These organizations use RFID as a means of knowing where shipments are in-transit, rather than only knowing when they leave and arrive at their locations; thus, when inventories are being taken, they can include those items being shipped (Resource #8).
RFID systems have found their way actively into museums, and as a sideline into a number of libraries across America. An interactive science museum in San Francisco experimented with an RFID system labeled “eXspot” (due to the X-shaped readers positioned at exhibits) between 2002 and 2005. This museum used small cards or necklaces with embedded RFID tags which visitors could carry around and place on the stationary readers. The visitor’s RFID tag would relay pre-written exhibit information to a personal webpage for the visitor on the museum’s website; the purpose of the webpage is to provide the visitor with information on visited exhibits that they would enjoy exploring at will at home, with the ability to see photos of the exhibit items and show their family and friends. RFID is said to enhance the museum experience by allowing the individual to personalize their trip and learn what they want to learn, saving for later recall information and experiences that they would like to further investigate on their own. The Cleveland Museum of Art, one of the United States most prestigious art museums, will be using RFID technology in their exhibits in 2010 after a multi-year renovation project (Resource #9).
Libraries across the country have quickly become the most active users of RFID in the non-profit sector. California State University Library (Long Beach), UNLV Library, San Francisco Public Library, Berkeley (CA) Public Library, University of Connecticut libraries, New York Public Library, and North Canton (OH) Public Library are a few of the many libraries to be utilizing this new technology for inventorying shelved library books. Tags—replacing self-adhesive metal strips previously used in books—are placed in books checked out in pairs of 5-10 on radio frequency pads at the front desk. Inventories can be performed with portable readers shelf-by-shelf, saving time, money, and alerting librarians when books are out of place on a shelf. Robert Ferrari of California State University Library (Long Beach) states that “. . . ‘they had never performed an extensive inventory prior to having RFID. Now he inventories 5000 books per hour. The first time they did a partial inventory, Ferrari found 300 items they had recorded as lost or missing’” (Resource #10). UNLV Library estimated a savings of $40,000 for not having to replace about 500 materials previously believed to be lost.
RFID is now being discussed for use in archives, and has been implemented by records managers in various fields. The potential use for RFID in archives could be in placing passive RFID tags (the safest for use around archival materials) either on archival boxes or individual folders. This would enable archives to monitor through a reader the locations of various collections or folders from a collection within the storage area and reading room, as well as employee work area. The benefit would come in greatly reducing the chances of misplacing materials, misarranging collections, and ensuring that patrons and employees do not leave the archives with any collections or folders without permission. RFID readers can be set to alert someone when materials are being taken beyond a designated zone, or when certain rare or “high-level” materials are being used in locations where they should not be kept. Security, user records, and collection inventorying can all be improved with minimal intrusion to archival materials, especially since RFID does not require line-of-sight to read tags (useful for medium to large archives). As of yet, however, many archives—including the National Archives—are holding off utilizing RFID tags until the technology improves, security issues can be addressed successfully, and the cost-benefit of changing inventory systems can all be improved (Resource #11).
Records management benefits from RFID as “RIM professionals using RFID now have the ability to actually check files out—and back in—to users with no intermediation. They also can track and monitor files and records with extreme accuracy, not only within the room but throughout the entire facility” (Resource #12). A law firm dealing with patent law began an RFID system from Checkpoint Systems, Inc. in 1999 to manage its 12,000 files and growing, with the result of a great amount of time saved and legal research moving faster. Since records management deals with active materials, passive RFID tags would more immediately benefit RM rather than archives, at least until more archives-friendly adhesive labels and tags are developed. They would be especially beneficial for government record keepers, who are tasked with trying to keep track of lack numbers of records which are continually being utilized (Resource #13).
While RFID technology poses a huge benefit to archives, there are some serious difficulties to the implementation of the technology in archives. As with all new computer-based innovations, technological theft can be a potential hurdle as—theoretically—anyone with a reader and the right software can find where all the “rare” archival materials are located. Also in the realm of possibility is the ability of a person with a reader to re-program the RFID tags on archival boxes or folders. New protocols, algorithms, and codes are being instituted to protect this from happening, however the technology must catch up with the propensity for misuse of RFID before it can be feasible for archives to invest in it (Resource #14).
A second concern with RFID is the labels utilized for the tags: the adhesives of the tags could damage archival materials through off-gassing. Additionally, the labels’ adhesive could fail with time, or the labels could be pulled off of the archival boxes or folders accidentally. This concern could be solved by the implant of grain-sized RFID tags into acid-free folders and archival boxes, without the use of adhesive labels. Software upgrading can also be an issue, as many companies currently producing RFID tags have proprietary claims on them; several of these companies include 3M, Checkpoint Systems, Inc., and Virtua Library Services. Currently, standards devised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to delineate communication between readers and tags have been implemented in order to form better interoperability with in-place computer platforms of organizations. Time and money to program the tags is another issue for archives and libraries that do not have the resources to begin and RFID system for their collections (Resource #15).
Some materials, such as metals and water, absorb or deflect radio waves (RF-absorbent or RF-opaque), giving incomplete or no readings for tagged files or boxes during the inventory or tracking of materials. This depends on the radio frequency of the tags. There are three types of radio frequency: low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF), and ultra high frequency (UHF). UHF gives the best transfer rate of data and largest read zone, while LF can transmit with better success. Older RFID tags could not be read well on items stacked two-to-three deep on shelves; while this issue has been solved greatly in recent years, there could still be the occasional non-read of tagged items that could be on archives’ shelves. RFID tags are thought to endure indefinitely (principally passive tags), yet there is no sure way of knowing how long these tags can last. Although RFID stands to be an excellent future option for use in archives, at present the technology is in its infancy (comparable to radio technology in the 1940s versus the 1990s). As technology rapidly advances, the reality is that by the mid 2010s, RFID could be in many large and medium-sized archives throughout the United States.
Resources
1) Radio Frequency Identification Technologies: A Workshop Summary. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2004). Viewed on May 21, 2009, at http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11189&page=R1.
2) Sandip Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook (New York: IBM, 2006), 3-17; Radio Frequency; Roy Want, RFID Explained: A Primer on Radio Frequency Identification Technologies (Morgan & Claypool, 2006), 7-9.
3) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 3-17; Radio Frequency Identification Technologies.
4) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 3-17, 52-53; Radio Frequency Identification Technologies.
5) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 19-20, 50-51; Want, RFID Explained, 63-66.
6) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 22; Radio Frequency Identification Technologies.
7) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 22-29; Radio Frequency Identification Technologies.
8) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 63-88; Want, RFID Explained, 4, 29-40.
9) “Advantages of RFID in Museum Setting.” NJE Consulting. Viewed at http://www.nje.ca/RFID_ Museum.htm; Silvia Filippini-Fantoni and Jonathan P. Bowen, “Mobile Multimedia: Reflections from Ten Years of Practice,” Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media, Loic Tallon and Kevin Walker, eds. (New York: AltaMira, 2008), 85-85, 135-139; Farhat Khan, “Museum Puts Tags on Stuffed Birds.” RFID Journal (Sept. 7, 2004).Viewed at http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/1110/1/; Wessel, Rhea. “RFID Helps Malaysian Museums Track Artifacts.” RFID Journal (June 22, 2007). Viewed at http://www.cbs.com.my/english/news/rfidjournal.pdf.
10) Laura Smart, “Making Sense of RFID,” Library Journal 129 (Fall 2004), 4-6. Viewed on EBSCO at http://search.ebscohost.com.; Diane Ward, “Radio Frequency Identification Systems for Libraries and Archives: An Introduction.” Library & Archival Security 18.2 (2003): 15-19. Viewed on EBSCO at http://search.ebscohost.com.
11) ACERA Meeting Minutes, 11/06/08,” Advisory Committee on the Electronic Records Archives (Meeting NO. 7). Viewed at http://www.archives.gov/era/pdf/acera7-minutes-110608-final.pdf; Paul Brachfeld (Office of Inspector General), “Audit Memorandum 06-07, Evaluation of Management Control Program for FY 2005,” National Archives and Records Administration (December 21, 2005). Viewed at http://www.archives.gov/oig/
pdf/audit-report-06-07.pdf.
12) Michael J. Faber, “RFID: The Next Tool for Managing Records?” Information Management Journal 36.6 (Nov./Dec. 2002), 62. Viewed at EBSCO at http://search.ebscohost.com.
13) Faber, “RFID,” 62.
14) Lahiri, RFID Sourcebook, 108-109.
15) Ward, “Radio Frequency,” 15-19.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Case Study—MPLP for Entry-Level Archivists: The Congressman David Hobson Papers
I am posting this draft article I had written last year about a hands-on approach to MPLP for grad students and entry-level archivists. I never published it, and the topic has been raised with me several times recently. I will note that I have not received permission from the institution under who's oversight and commission I was volunteering full-time at when I worked on this MPLP project. All views expressed within this post are mine and mine alone, and are not reflective of the processing approaches or theory of Wright State University Special Collections and Archives.
To step aside from QR codes for a time, I am offering this post on Greene-Meissner's "More Product, Less Process" approach to archival processing for young archivists.
Fresh-out-of-graduate-school archivists are full of optimism, fervor, and an abundance of knowledge from archivist conferences, literature, and internships. Though their levels of experience differ, they have all heard of the hip-cat lingo for the 21st-century archivist: EAD, digital preservation, Web 2.0, and email archiving. One such term that has spread a wildfire of debate throughout the archival community is the recommendation by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner—that archivists let go of their anal-retentive, perfectionist tendencies in order to provide the public with access to records by a more streamlined, realistic approach to processing backlogged archival collections. Labeled “More Product, Less Process” (or MPLP for short), the debate over this processing strategy centers not on its usefulness as a technique—what self-respecting archivist would not love to process a great number of collections in a shorter period of time!—but on its ability to capture or control the descriptive elements of a set of archival records within the confines of the professional responsibilities of an archivist. (Reference #1)
Understandably, traditionally-trained archivists cringe at the notion of not arranging or giving their utmost attention to every individual item in a collection. We who have undergone such training feel that to do less than our best with each piece of paper or photograph could leave some tidbit of historical information un-announced to researchers who could be desperately seeking such material for a project or paper. Yet, MPLP is not about neglecting descriptive elements or mere exhibition of an increased performance by the archives to its institutional directors. Rather, MPLP grabs upon the communal instincts of archivists when we all walk amidst our shelves of unprocessed material and our hearts cry out “Boy, I’d really like these materials to be available for use!” MPLP in archives is common sense guided by an archivist’s trained processing instincts, pure and simple. It works best as an archival approach for medium to large collections, and will help relieve the stress on archives’ pocketbooks and on their shelving limitations. However, MPLP can be a challenging processing technique for the entry-level archivist. The fresh meat of preservation circles have not been entirely in charge of working larger collections, nor have they fully gained confidence in their decision-making skills in regards to archives. They are full of the perfect professional archival wisdom gleaned from the intellects of their model archivist instructors, ready to save the day with PlastiKlips and polyester film. The harsh realities of possibly being the only trained archivist at an institution, or spending all your waking hours on donor relations and grant-writing, have not permeated these pure ones (you can chuckle now if you so desire, reader). Such was my initial experience as a volunteer, full-time archivist on the Congressman David Hobson Papers at Wright State University Special Collections and Archives in Dayton, Ohio.
Fresh out of Wright State University’s Public History graduate program, I needed the one thing all employers demand of potential employees: experience in their field. Towards that end, I volunteered for my first non-school related archivist position in the summer of 2010 for two and a half months, and was assigned to work on two collections at the WSU Special Collections. The larger of the two collections was what turned out to be a 151-banker box collection of materials from a former U.S. Congressman for the Ohio 7th District, David Hobson. Congressman Hobson had retired from office in 2008, and his collection had been coming to the Special Collections in pieces over a span of two years. This collection was one of several recent, extremely large collections to grace their presence in the Special Collections’ holdings. Congressman Hobson’s papers were fairly organized, and what was not organized could be ordered fairly quickly if the right approach was taken to the collection. Space was at a premium, time was of the essence, and a young archivist was handed what seemed a beast of a collection. The rather unique part of this particular collection was that the Special Collections was making it their first try at MPLP processing, of which I had only a passing familiarity prior to this endeavor.
My experiences have taught me that both extremes of the MPLP debate are missing the point: processing just to process is not good history or professional conduct; neither are sidestepping traditional techniques or providing less detail merely to get archival collections prepared in a state we term “available to the public.” An insurance company that just processes all insurance claims will not be in business long, neither will a grocery store whose products are “available to the public” but without any pricing information for the products on the shelves. Processing should have nothing else at its heart but to make available to others the expertise and “special” knowledge you, the processor, have gained from your unique, in-depth experience of processing a collection. Most researches will never be able to do what you have done (nor will most archivists be thrilled with a researcher asking to see all 100 boxes of a collection to get to know better the topic or person represented in the collection). Therefore, I present to the archival community—and especially to entry-level archivists—several principles (in true I-Robot form) to make MPLP about a good product in less time, that still falls within much of traditional archival teaching.
First Principle: make the inventory of your collection the centerpiece of the MPLP process. The difference between a traditional inventory and an MPLP inventory should be obvious: since MPLP is less specific, the one element of this processing mechanism that should be extremely in-depth is the inventory. While this point seems contrary to “traditional” MPLP strategies, it is a vital element of a version of MPLP developed throughout the processing of the Hobson collection. The less detailed an inventory is, the more often one will have to double check boxes and continually change their series, topical breakdowns, and rearrange the contents of their boxes, wasting valuable time and energy that the MPLP process is meant to save in the first place. The more detailed the inventory, the less one will have need to work in depth on the scope and content notes, for much of what you need will be already included in the inventory. The in-depth inventory additionally will make it easy for an archivist to handle over some processing duties to student assistants or volunteers, ensuring that they have the information they need to create box or series lists. Inventorying is less time-consuming than physical processing of materials, and it pays to spend an extra few days on the inventory if it means saving you a few weeks down the road. This is especially the case when there is only one person working on a collection, and that person has to move the boxes back and forth from their storage location. For large collections in many archives, this is an impracticality and an unnecessarily exhausting exercise.
Second Principle: the series and subseries of your collection are the keys to a successful MPLP process. The more series and subseries you have without overdoing it, the less time you, the archivist, has to spend on folder-level or item-level description and detail. I gave the Hobson collection 12 series and 37 subseries to facilitate such a detailed order that the collection could be processed with a great amount of description and control, while simultaneously cutting off time and the number of supplies needed to process at a minute level. Within the series or subseries of the collection, I arranged the foldered materials in a rough chronological order by year (rough since not every single item was sorted or checked for a date, in keeping with normal MPLP techniques). For example, note the following entry for Series I from the introduction paragraph for the Hobson Papers’ scope and content note:
Series I: Congressional Legislation (102nd-110th Congress), is housed in 10 records center boxes and divided into five subseries: Subseries IA: Miscellaneous Legislative Issues and Debates, Subseries IB: Congressional Bills and Resolutions, Subseries IC: Signed Letters and Sponsored Legislation, Subseries ID: Thank You Letters, and Subseries IE: Congratulation Letters.
Rather than leaving all the letters in one series as “Congressional Correspondence,” the divisions of “letters” to Congressman Hobson were broken into Thank You Letters, Congratulation Letters, and in Series II the Constituent Correspondence. This category separation gives the researcher enough of an understanding of what should be contained within each subseries that no more processing detail beyond the folders (see discussion a little further on related to using folders for subject matters) should be needed. If I am a researcher looking to see if there exists a thank you letter from Senator Trent Lott (for example) to Congressman Hobson, the “Thank You Letters” subseries, being within the Congressional Legislation series, should guide one to realize these thank you letters are related specifically to Congressman Hobson’s dealings with politicians and organizations concerning legislative issues (not thank you letters of a more personal nature). There should be no need for a single item-level description or MARC entry for “Thank You Letter, From Trent Lott to David Hobson, [date]” (technically incorrect, I know—I use merely as an example).
The greatest element of control in MPLP processing are the series and subseries of the collection. Even more so than traditional processing, the more detailed a description for the contents within the series or subseries—or a greater number of subseries to provide greater control—the less time and description one has to spend beyond the folder level. Item level can almost entirely be dismissed from MPLP processing (except, of course, on occasion depending on the number of items or importance of those items historically), which leaves the archivist the flexibility to process as many folders as possible that belong to one subseries before moving onto another.
Third Principle: subjects and folders can and should go hand-in-hand where possible. Congressman Hobson was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee of the Committee on the Budget. Under his watch, the subcommittee dealt with the issues of nuclear waste sites and nuclear weapons. There was a great deal of information on this topic, but the individual items often were a little scattered, with there being copied newspaper articles for research, official subcommittee hearing transcripts, letters from experts in the nuclear field, and so forth. Rather than agonize about the item-level description or division of the folders, I used these two broad subject categories—nuclear waste sites and nuclear weapons—and put all the materials dealing with each respective topic in a folder labeled either “Nuclear Waste Sites” or “Nuclear Weapons.” There were several folders for each subject, span dates were assigned to each folder’s contents, and the processing was complete. In this manner, a researcher looking for information on nuclear waste site cleanups in the 2000s would be able to search the Hobson collection’s box list, where the folder title is listed, and the researcher can then search though each individual item in the folder. You see, there’s no loss of access—it is just a broader way of thinking about access.
Librarians who utilize access points in cataloging descriptions for, say, a book on World War II in North Africa, could represent the subjects “World War II in northern Africa” and “Operation Torch in North Africa” as, respectively, the subject classifications “Africa, North--History, Military--20th century” and “U.S. Army campaigns of World War II.” Although you do not list all the countries in which the U.S. Army fought in Africa or the specific military campaign in Vichy-controlled French North Africa, a researcher will look under resources dealing with the subject heading “U.S. Army campaigns of World War II” for a book on Operation Torch. This is in keeping with the definition of subject classification according to Richard Pearce-Moses’ staple work Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology: “The organization of materials into categories according to a scheme that identifies, distinguishes, and relates the concepts or topics of the materials” (Reference #2). Broad subjects are helpful for most of what an archivist will process utilizing MPLP.
You might be thinking, “We already follow these guidelines, though—so what is so different in your approach compared with ours?” The rest of this article will be focusing on the specific time, space, and non-traditional benefits wrought by the approach taken with the Congressman David Hobson collection. One issue in current MPLP processing approaches is the belief that to save time, less-descriptive finding aids are needed when using MPLP on a collection. Christine Weideman stated in her MPLP article “Accessioning As Processing” regarding Yale University’s MPLP approach that “By doing so little work beneath the series level and within folders, the accuracy of the finding aid is potentially compromised for researchers and reference archivists” (Reference #3).
My question is simple: why? Why does it have to? A finding aid’s most relevant factors are the scope and content note, biographical information/historical sketch note, and arrangement note. If one follows the principles I have laid out above, an archival collection’s box list should be a mere listing of the folder titles, in the order in which the processor(s) have arranged them within the box. The inventory of the 151 boxes (now whittled down to 140 linear feet) of the Congressman David Hobson Papers took me two weeks on a part-time basis; the rest of my time was spent pulling reference desk hours, and processing the other collection I mentioned previously to which I had been assigned. The actual processing of the collection occurred from July 26, 2010, to August 13, 2010, Monday through Friday, during which time I provided occasional research assistance, served 10-12 hours a week on the reference desk, and served in a variety of other small capacities. Three solid weeks of processing led to the complete processing, re-boxing, needed re-foldering, and historical research of approximately 110 of the original 151 unprocessed boxes of the Hobson collection. I then worked in the WSU Archives for 7 hours per week for about a month (from the end of August to the first week of October), during which time I processed another 15 boxes and created a processing scheme—complete with processing guidelines—for the graduate assistant who would complete the collection, including filling in the box list. A total of about a month of processing led to the processing of 125 boxes, with 15 of those boxes being eliminated due to condensing the materials and giving them better physical arrangement. The total processing time for the collection, between myself and the graduate assistant, took approximately two and a half to four months.
As of the time of this writing, the WSU Special Collections graduate assistant—Jeremy Katz—who was assigned to complete the collection following my guidelines, has completed all processing steps, and finalized the collection and its finding aid (see the finding aid here: Congressman David Hobson Papers). The finding aid totaled 98 pages. Most of this is the box list, with pretty basic biographical and arrangement notes that sufficiently explain the collection’s history and organization. Mr. Katz worked on the remaining part of the collection—26 boxes of photographs and local Ohio district records—part-time on what is already a part-time work schedule (20 hours a week for graduate assistants at Wright State University). The description of the collection in detail in the finding aid makes handling such a large collection so much easier, particularly when a researcher is looking for certain information from the collection. Less-descriptive finding aids are not always better, and will cost an archival repository in the long run with the time needed to answer researcher’s questions, and clear up their confusion over little described or arranged portions of a collection. There is one institution in the state of Ohio in which I researched that utilized MPLP-styled finding aids, and they were quite awful: not only were the descriptions incorrect, but the categories and arrangement of materials were confusing. Saving time is no excuse for poor organization or poor description.
A second point I would like to address regarding the MPLP debate is the issue of FTEs (full-time equivalent) archivists and time-saving procedures. In his response to some technical and perhaps analytical inconsistencies with the Greene-Messner approach, Carl Van Ness of the University of Florida made an extremely obvious and also extremely vital observation about archival institutions and the implementation of MPLP:
At most institutions, people at the bottom of the archival workforce hierarchy perform the labor-intensive preservation tasks [i.e. remove paper clips, etc.]. At academic repositories, student assistants, many on federal work-study assistance and making near minimum wage, are routinely employed. At local historical societies, unpaid volunteers often do the work. Furthermore, these same people perform labor-intensive descriptive tasks such as typing up file title lists. . . The unskilled FTE saved when we stop removing paper clips will not convert to even a fraction of the professional or paraprofessional FTEs needed to bolster descriptive programs and reference services" (Reference #4).
Exactly! This, my fellow archivists, is precisely the problem. Would an architectural firm have an intern draw up all the infrastructure support plans for a skyscraper? Would a general have a private lead a charge into a battle? Would a historian and history professor put the writing of their monumental history of Aaron Burr on their graduate assistant? Obviously, no. Then why do archives allow such a large amount of the work to be done by students? What are the actual trained archivists doing? Usually, donor relations, outreach, cataloging, preservation tasks, exhibit creation/installation, committee meetings, budget meetings, and the list goes on and on. I suppose, as a young professional, I would ask why someone goes to school for 6-8 years for history-related studies and professional training in archives/library science, only to have someone with at minimum a bachelor’s degree do the processing, description, and creation of a finding aid for a manuscript collection?
I am not attempting or mean to knock or insult any archivist out there; I simply am pointing out how the issues observed by Greene-Messiner, Van Ness, and many other professionals have developed. An archival institution is a complex organization requiring professional archivists to wear many hats and change direction on projects at the drop of a dime. However, the issue still exists, and professional archivists are, in the words of Van Ness, serving as a “collection curator” (Reference #5). As a student, I have seen the student side of processing, and through my connection with numerous archival students and professionals in the field, I am well aware of the numerous mistakes that these archival “newbies” make on collections. This is where the real time comes from in many archives: not only do archivists have to train the volunteers and student assistants, but they will later have to go back through these individuals work and possibly redo a great amount of it. Obviously, students (I include myself in this group to a degree), need training from somewhere, and archival institutions are the only places to receive that training hands-on. However, because of the extreme amount of quick decision-making necessitated by the MPLP technique, I strongly believe the archivist in charge of the collection should be very involved in the processing itself of collections utilizing MPLP. Oftentimes, students can be afraid of getting in trouble for mistakes, over-think decisions, and often are afraid to ask a busy archivist for assistance or clarification on any MPLP approaches to particular problems. If professional archivists are having difficulty getting accustomed to MPLP, then it follows that students and volunteers would have much more so of a difficult time.
Equally important, student assistants and volunteers often become the experts on the collection which they are processing. When these short-term “employees” leave the archival institution they call home, what can an archives do? After all, we are told time and again in the archival community that the archivist who worked on a particular collection is an invaluable source of information for researchers on those collections. Yet if those with the knowledge of the collections leave the archives for whatever reason, how will the time, research needs, and access at that institution be affected? Can this effect be quantified in dollars and minutes? The answer is an obvious no. By the archival community placing the great bulk of their processing on non-permanent individuals, their institutional knowledge—the thing that makes an archives so invaluable for researchers—is greatly harmed for the negative.
As for myself, I was a volunteer and had just been a student as of the summer of 2010; however, I also had the archival studies degree, completed my archives internship, processed several collections, been a published author/researcher, and had a good hold on the history and subject matter involved in the collection. John Armstrong, reference archivist at WSU Special Collections and Archives, was the archivist in charge over me during my processing of the collection, to be there as a sounding board for decisions and also to make calls on important issues related to the policies of WSU Special Collections and any donor restrictions on the collection. Even so, I was allowed to process the collection independently, and had occasionally been consulted by the graduate assistant who completed the Hobson collection. That being said, there were a combination of experience factors, pre-existing knowledge, and trust involved in the processing of the collection that can take a while in institutions which are just becoming familiar with the character and knowledge of their new volunteers and student assistants. Supervision and training of student assistants and volunteers often slips through the cracks in many archival institutions throughout the country (coming from the perspective of a student familiar with other student’s experience at these institutions). The training may come with time, but MPLP is suppose to be a time-saving device that requires experience to apply it to the utmost of its potential as a technique.
Did I remove paper clips, staples, acidic manila folders, and other harmful elements to the materials in the Hobson collection? When necessary for re-filing or due to bad deterioration—most certainly. Did we remove everything from their acidic folders and place them in newer, more expensive acid-free folders—not always. General constituent correspondence, which contained innumerable staples and odd material types, were left in their manila envelopes. This was partly due to the numbering on the existing folders, partly to save time, and partly because there is no point in re-folding all of 53 boxes of paper objects if the acidic papers in them are going to be left with envelopes containing glue, staples, glittery thank you cards, and other such archival preservation nightmares. The reality was that general correspondence does not garner as many researcher requests as would congressional correspondence. Additionally, taking valuable archival supplies from use in, say, an addition to Glenn Curtiss collection material held at Wright State Special Collections could not be justified in order to preserve a note, for example, on blue card stock from a 5-year old girl telling Congressman Hobson “thanks for coming to our school.” As such, I agree with Dan Santamaria’s observation that “Processing priorities and even processing decisions about individual collections are simply a form of appraisal, of assigning value to collections and portions of collections” (bold and italics added) (Reference #6). The great strength of MPLP is the ability to appraise materials quickly; but this approach in the hands of the ill-equipped can make those quick decisions quick problems, as well.
Hopefully, my experience with MPLP and the approach utilized on this particular collection will help to increase the comfort level of applying MPLP. The key to the use of MPLP on a chosen collection is to not focus on the details, in order to provide more detail in less time for the user. In a session at the MAC Fall 2006 Symposium on Minimal Processing, Colleen McFarland summed it up best by advising: “Be imperfect. Perfection is your worst enemy. . . Collections do not have to look pristine in order to contain useful information" (Reference #7).
References
1) Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, “More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Processing,” American Archivist 68:2 (2005).
2) Richard Pearce-Moses, Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005), viewed on February 16, 2011, at http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp.
3) Christine Weideman, “Accessioning as Processing." American Archivist (Chicago: Society of American Archivists) 69.2 (Fall/Winter 2006): 282.
4) Carl Van Ness, “Much Ado About Paper Clips: ‘More Product, Less Process’ and the Modern Manuscript Repository,” American Archivist 73.1 (Spring/Summer 2010): 138-139.
5) Van Ness, 144.
6) Dan Santamaria, “Guest blogger: Dan Santamaria shares some thoughts on the recent MPLP discussions” (August 21, 2009), viewed on February 16, 2011, at http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=332.
7) Colleen McFarland, “‘It Changed My Life:' Lessons Learned from Minimal Processing,” presented by Colleen McFarland at the Midwest Archives Conference Fall Symposium, October 2006 (viewed on February 20, 2011, at http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/lonearr/resources.asp).
To step aside from QR codes for a time, I am offering this post on Greene-Meissner's "More Product, Less Process" approach to archival processing for young archivists.
Fresh-out-of-graduate-school archivists are full of optimism, fervor, and an abundance of knowledge from archivist conferences, literature, and internships. Though their levels of experience differ, they have all heard of the hip-cat lingo for the 21st-century archivist: EAD, digital preservation, Web 2.0, and email archiving. One such term that has spread a wildfire of debate throughout the archival community is the recommendation by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner—that archivists let go of their anal-retentive, perfectionist tendencies in order to provide the public with access to records by a more streamlined, realistic approach to processing backlogged archival collections. Labeled “More Product, Less Process” (or MPLP for short), the debate over this processing strategy centers not on its usefulness as a technique—what self-respecting archivist would not love to process a great number of collections in a shorter period of time!—but on its ability to capture or control the descriptive elements of a set of archival records within the confines of the professional responsibilities of an archivist. (Reference #1)
Understandably, traditionally-trained archivists cringe at the notion of not arranging or giving their utmost attention to every individual item in a collection. We who have undergone such training feel that to do less than our best with each piece of paper or photograph could leave some tidbit of historical information un-announced to researchers who could be desperately seeking such material for a project or paper. Yet, MPLP is not about neglecting descriptive elements or mere exhibition of an increased performance by the archives to its institutional directors. Rather, MPLP grabs upon the communal instincts of archivists when we all walk amidst our shelves of unprocessed material and our hearts cry out “Boy, I’d really like these materials to be available for use!” MPLP in archives is common sense guided by an archivist’s trained processing instincts, pure and simple. It works best as an archival approach for medium to large collections, and will help relieve the stress on archives’ pocketbooks and on their shelving limitations. However, MPLP can be a challenging processing technique for the entry-level archivist. The fresh meat of preservation circles have not been entirely in charge of working larger collections, nor have they fully gained confidence in their decision-making skills in regards to archives. They are full of the perfect professional archival wisdom gleaned from the intellects of their model archivist instructors, ready to save the day with PlastiKlips and polyester film. The harsh realities of possibly being the only trained archivist at an institution, or spending all your waking hours on donor relations and grant-writing, have not permeated these pure ones (you can chuckle now if you so desire, reader). Such was my initial experience as a volunteer, full-time archivist on the Congressman David Hobson Papers at Wright State University Special Collections and Archives in Dayton, Ohio.
Fresh out of Wright State University’s Public History graduate program, I needed the one thing all employers demand of potential employees: experience in their field. Towards that end, I volunteered for my first non-school related archivist position in the summer of 2010 for two and a half months, and was assigned to work on two collections at the WSU Special Collections. The larger of the two collections was what turned out to be a 151-banker box collection of materials from a former U.S. Congressman for the Ohio 7th District, David Hobson. Congressman Hobson had retired from office in 2008, and his collection had been coming to the Special Collections in pieces over a span of two years. This collection was one of several recent, extremely large collections to grace their presence in the Special Collections’ holdings. Congressman Hobson’s papers were fairly organized, and what was not organized could be ordered fairly quickly if the right approach was taken to the collection. Space was at a premium, time was of the essence, and a young archivist was handed what seemed a beast of a collection. The rather unique part of this particular collection was that the Special Collections was making it their first try at MPLP processing, of which I had only a passing familiarity prior to this endeavor.
My experiences have taught me that both extremes of the MPLP debate are missing the point: processing just to process is not good history or professional conduct; neither are sidestepping traditional techniques or providing less detail merely to get archival collections prepared in a state we term “available to the public.” An insurance company that just processes all insurance claims will not be in business long, neither will a grocery store whose products are “available to the public” but without any pricing information for the products on the shelves. Processing should have nothing else at its heart but to make available to others the expertise and “special” knowledge you, the processor, have gained from your unique, in-depth experience of processing a collection. Most researches will never be able to do what you have done (nor will most archivists be thrilled with a researcher asking to see all 100 boxes of a collection to get to know better the topic or person represented in the collection). Therefore, I present to the archival community—and especially to entry-level archivists—several principles (in true I-Robot form) to make MPLP about a good product in less time, that still falls within much of traditional archival teaching.
First Principle: make the inventory of your collection the centerpiece of the MPLP process. The difference between a traditional inventory and an MPLP inventory should be obvious: since MPLP is less specific, the one element of this processing mechanism that should be extremely in-depth is the inventory. While this point seems contrary to “traditional” MPLP strategies, it is a vital element of a version of MPLP developed throughout the processing of the Hobson collection. The less detailed an inventory is, the more often one will have to double check boxes and continually change their series, topical breakdowns, and rearrange the contents of their boxes, wasting valuable time and energy that the MPLP process is meant to save in the first place. The more detailed the inventory, the less one will have need to work in depth on the scope and content notes, for much of what you need will be already included in the inventory. The in-depth inventory additionally will make it easy for an archivist to handle over some processing duties to student assistants or volunteers, ensuring that they have the information they need to create box or series lists. Inventorying is less time-consuming than physical processing of materials, and it pays to spend an extra few days on the inventory if it means saving you a few weeks down the road. This is especially the case when there is only one person working on a collection, and that person has to move the boxes back and forth from their storage location. For large collections in many archives, this is an impracticality and an unnecessarily exhausting exercise.
Second Principle: the series and subseries of your collection are the keys to a successful MPLP process. The more series and subseries you have without overdoing it, the less time you, the archivist, has to spend on folder-level or item-level description and detail. I gave the Hobson collection 12 series and 37 subseries to facilitate such a detailed order that the collection could be processed with a great amount of description and control, while simultaneously cutting off time and the number of supplies needed to process at a minute level. Within the series or subseries of the collection, I arranged the foldered materials in a rough chronological order by year (rough since not every single item was sorted or checked for a date, in keeping with normal MPLP techniques). For example, note the following entry for Series I from the introduction paragraph for the Hobson Papers’ scope and content note:
Series I: Congressional Legislation (102nd-110th Congress), is housed in 10 records center boxes and divided into five subseries: Subseries IA: Miscellaneous Legislative Issues and Debates, Subseries IB: Congressional Bills and Resolutions, Subseries IC: Signed Letters and Sponsored Legislation, Subseries ID: Thank You Letters, and Subseries IE: Congratulation Letters.
Rather than leaving all the letters in one series as “Congressional Correspondence,” the divisions of “letters” to Congressman Hobson were broken into Thank You Letters, Congratulation Letters, and in Series II the Constituent Correspondence. This category separation gives the researcher enough of an understanding of what should be contained within each subseries that no more processing detail beyond the folders (see discussion a little further on related to using folders for subject matters) should be needed. If I am a researcher looking to see if there exists a thank you letter from Senator Trent Lott (for example) to Congressman Hobson, the “Thank You Letters” subseries, being within the Congressional Legislation series, should guide one to realize these thank you letters are related specifically to Congressman Hobson’s dealings with politicians and organizations concerning legislative issues (not thank you letters of a more personal nature). There should be no need for a single item-level description or MARC entry for “Thank You Letter, From Trent Lott to David Hobson, [date]” (technically incorrect, I know—I use merely as an example).
The greatest element of control in MPLP processing are the series and subseries of the collection. Even more so than traditional processing, the more detailed a description for the contents within the series or subseries—or a greater number of subseries to provide greater control—the less time and description one has to spend beyond the folder level. Item level can almost entirely be dismissed from MPLP processing (except, of course, on occasion depending on the number of items or importance of those items historically), which leaves the archivist the flexibility to process as many folders as possible that belong to one subseries before moving onto another.
Third Principle: subjects and folders can and should go hand-in-hand where possible. Congressman Hobson was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee of the Committee on the Budget. Under his watch, the subcommittee dealt with the issues of nuclear waste sites and nuclear weapons. There was a great deal of information on this topic, but the individual items often were a little scattered, with there being copied newspaper articles for research, official subcommittee hearing transcripts, letters from experts in the nuclear field, and so forth. Rather than agonize about the item-level description or division of the folders, I used these two broad subject categories—nuclear waste sites and nuclear weapons—and put all the materials dealing with each respective topic in a folder labeled either “Nuclear Waste Sites” or “Nuclear Weapons.” There were several folders for each subject, span dates were assigned to each folder’s contents, and the processing was complete. In this manner, a researcher looking for information on nuclear waste site cleanups in the 2000s would be able to search the Hobson collection’s box list, where the folder title is listed, and the researcher can then search though each individual item in the folder. You see, there’s no loss of access—it is just a broader way of thinking about access.
Librarians who utilize access points in cataloging descriptions for, say, a book on World War II in North Africa, could represent the subjects “World War II in northern Africa” and “Operation Torch in North Africa” as, respectively, the subject classifications “Africa, North--History, Military--20th century” and “U.S. Army campaigns of World War II.” Although you do not list all the countries in which the U.S. Army fought in Africa or the specific military campaign in Vichy-controlled French North Africa, a researcher will look under resources dealing with the subject heading “U.S. Army campaigns of World War II” for a book on Operation Torch. This is in keeping with the definition of subject classification according to Richard Pearce-Moses’ staple work Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology: “The organization of materials into categories according to a scheme that identifies, distinguishes, and relates the concepts or topics of the materials” (Reference #2). Broad subjects are helpful for most of what an archivist will process utilizing MPLP.
You might be thinking, “We already follow these guidelines, though—so what is so different in your approach compared with ours?” The rest of this article will be focusing on the specific time, space, and non-traditional benefits wrought by the approach taken with the Congressman David Hobson collection. One issue in current MPLP processing approaches is the belief that to save time, less-descriptive finding aids are needed when using MPLP on a collection. Christine Weideman stated in her MPLP article “Accessioning As Processing” regarding Yale University’s MPLP approach that “By doing so little work beneath the series level and within folders, the accuracy of the finding aid is potentially compromised for researchers and reference archivists” (Reference #3).
My question is simple: why? Why does it have to? A finding aid’s most relevant factors are the scope and content note, biographical information/historical sketch note, and arrangement note. If one follows the principles I have laid out above, an archival collection’s box list should be a mere listing of the folder titles, in the order in which the processor(s) have arranged them within the box. The inventory of the 151 boxes (now whittled down to 140 linear feet) of the Congressman David Hobson Papers took me two weeks on a part-time basis; the rest of my time was spent pulling reference desk hours, and processing the other collection I mentioned previously to which I had been assigned. The actual processing of the collection occurred from July 26, 2010, to August 13, 2010, Monday through Friday, during which time I provided occasional research assistance, served 10-12 hours a week on the reference desk, and served in a variety of other small capacities. Three solid weeks of processing led to the complete processing, re-boxing, needed re-foldering, and historical research of approximately 110 of the original 151 unprocessed boxes of the Hobson collection. I then worked in the WSU Archives for 7 hours per week for about a month (from the end of August to the first week of October), during which time I processed another 15 boxes and created a processing scheme—complete with processing guidelines—for the graduate assistant who would complete the collection, including filling in the box list. A total of about a month of processing led to the processing of 125 boxes, with 15 of those boxes being eliminated due to condensing the materials and giving them better physical arrangement. The total processing time for the collection, between myself and the graduate assistant, took approximately two and a half to four months.
As of the time of this writing, the WSU Special Collections graduate assistant—Jeremy Katz—who was assigned to complete the collection following my guidelines, has completed all processing steps, and finalized the collection and its finding aid (see the finding aid here: Congressman David Hobson Papers). The finding aid totaled 98 pages. Most of this is the box list, with pretty basic biographical and arrangement notes that sufficiently explain the collection’s history and organization. Mr. Katz worked on the remaining part of the collection—26 boxes of photographs and local Ohio district records—part-time on what is already a part-time work schedule (20 hours a week for graduate assistants at Wright State University). The description of the collection in detail in the finding aid makes handling such a large collection so much easier, particularly when a researcher is looking for certain information from the collection. Less-descriptive finding aids are not always better, and will cost an archival repository in the long run with the time needed to answer researcher’s questions, and clear up their confusion over little described or arranged portions of a collection. There is one institution in the state of Ohio in which I researched that utilized MPLP-styled finding aids, and they were quite awful: not only were the descriptions incorrect, but the categories and arrangement of materials were confusing. Saving time is no excuse for poor organization or poor description.
A second point I would like to address regarding the MPLP debate is the issue of FTEs (full-time equivalent) archivists and time-saving procedures. In his response to some technical and perhaps analytical inconsistencies with the Greene-Messner approach, Carl Van Ness of the University of Florida made an extremely obvious and also extremely vital observation about archival institutions and the implementation of MPLP:
At most institutions, people at the bottom of the archival workforce hierarchy perform the labor-intensive preservation tasks [i.e. remove paper clips, etc.]. At academic repositories, student assistants, many on federal work-study assistance and making near minimum wage, are routinely employed. At local historical societies, unpaid volunteers often do the work. Furthermore, these same people perform labor-intensive descriptive tasks such as typing up file title lists. . . The unskilled FTE saved when we stop removing paper clips will not convert to even a fraction of the professional or paraprofessional FTEs needed to bolster descriptive programs and reference services" (Reference #4).
Exactly! This, my fellow archivists, is precisely the problem. Would an architectural firm have an intern draw up all the infrastructure support plans for a skyscraper? Would a general have a private lead a charge into a battle? Would a historian and history professor put the writing of their monumental history of Aaron Burr on their graduate assistant? Obviously, no. Then why do archives allow such a large amount of the work to be done by students? What are the actual trained archivists doing? Usually, donor relations, outreach, cataloging, preservation tasks, exhibit creation/installation, committee meetings, budget meetings, and the list goes on and on. I suppose, as a young professional, I would ask why someone goes to school for 6-8 years for history-related studies and professional training in archives/library science, only to have someone with at minimum a bachelor’s degree do the processing, description, and creation of a finding aid for a manuscript collection?
I am not attempting or mean to knock or insult any archivist out there; I simply am pointing out how the issues observed by Greene-Messiner, Van Ness, and many other professionals have developed. An archival institution is a complex organization requiring professional archivists to wear many hats and change direction on projects at the drop of a dime. However, the issue still exists, and professional archivists are, in the words of Van Ness, serving as a “collection curator” (Reference #5). As a student, I have seen the student side of processing, and through my connection with numerous archival students and professionals in the field, I am well aware of the numerous mistakes that these archival “newbies” make on collections. This is where the real time comes from in many archives: not only do archivists have to train the volunteers and student assistants, but they will later have to go back through these individuals work and possibly redo a great amount of it. Obviously, students (I include myself in this group to a degree), need training from somewhere, and archival institutions are the only places to receive that training hands-on. However, because of the extreme amount of quick decision-making necessitated by the MPLP technique, I strongly believe the archivist in charge of the collection should be very involved in the processing itself of collections utilizing MPLP. Oftentimes, students can be afraid of getting in trouble for mistakes, over-think decisions, and often are afraid to ask a busy archivist for assistance or clarification on any MPLP approaches to particular problems. If professional archivists are having difficulty getting accustomed to MPLP, then it follows that students and volunteers would have much more so of a difficult time.
Equally important, student assistants and volunteers often become the experts on the collection which they are processing. When these short-term “employees” leave the archival institution they call home, what can an archives do? After all, we are told time and again in the archival community that the archivist who worked on a particular collection is an invaluable source of information for researchers on those collections. Yet if those with the knowledge of the collections leave the archives for whatever reason, how will the time, research needs, and access at that institution be affected? Can this effect be quantified in dollars and minutes? The answer is an obvious no. By the archival community placing the great bulk of their processing on non-permanent individuals, their institutional knowledge—the thing that makes an archives so invaluable for researchers—is greatly harmed for the negative.
As for myself, I was a volunteer and had just been a student as of the summer of 2010; however, I also had the archival studies degree, completed my archives internship, processed several collections, been a published author/researcher, and had a good hold on the history and subject matter involved in the collection. John Armstrong, reference archivist at WSU Special Collections and Archives, was the archivist in charge over me during my processing of the collection, to be there as a sounding board for decisions and also to make calls on important issues related to the policies of WSU Special Collections and any donor restrictions on the collection. Even so, I was allowed to process the collection independently, and had occasionally been consulted by the graduate assistant who completed the Hobson collection. That being said, there were a combination of experience factors, pre-existing knowledge, and trust involved in the processing of the collection that can take a while in institutions which are just becoming familiar with the character and knowledge of their new volunteers and student assistants. Supervision and training of student assistants and volunteers often slips through the cracks in many archival institutions throughout the country (coming from the perspective of a student familiar with other student’s experience at these institutions). The training may come with time, but MPLP is suppose to be a time-saving device that requires experience to apply it to the utmost of its potential as a technique.
Did I remove paper clips, staples, acidic manila folders, and other harmful elements to the materials in the Hobson collection? When necessary for re-filing or due to bad deterioration—most certainly. Did we remove everything from their acidic folders and place them in newer, more expensive acid-free folders—not always. General constituent correspondence, which contained innumerable staples and odd material types, were left in their manila envelopes. This was partly due to the numbering on the existing folders, partly to save time, and partly because there is no point in re-folding all of 53 boxes of paper objects if the acidic papers in them are going to be left with envelopes containing glue, staples, glittery thank you cards, and other such archival preservation nightmares. The reality was that general correspondence does not garner as many researcher requests as would congressional correspondence. Additionally, taking valuable archival supplies from use in, say, an addition to Glenn Curtiss collection material held at Wright State Special Collections could not be justified in order to preserve a note, for example, on blue card stock from a 5-year old girl telling Congressman Hobson “thanks for coming to our school.” As such, I agree with Dan Santamaria’s observation that “Processing priorities and even processing decisions about individual collections are simply a form of appraisal, of assigning value to collections and portions of collections” (bold and italics added) (Reference #6). The great strength of MPLP is the ability to appraise materials quickly; but this approach in the hands of the ill-equipped can make those quick decisions quick problems, as well.
Hopefully, my experience with MPLP and the approach utilized on this particular collection will help to increase the comfort level of applying MPLP. The key to the use of MPLP on a chosen collection is to not focus on the details, in order to provide more detail in less time for the user. In a session at the MAC Fall 2006 Symposium on Minimal Processing, Colleen McFarland summed it up best by advising: “Be imperfect. Perfection is your worst enemy. . . Collections do not have to look pristine in order to contain useful information" (Reference #7).
References
1) Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, “More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Processing,” American Archivist 68:2 (2005).
2) Richard Pearce-Moses, Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005), viewed on February 16, 2011, at http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp.
3) Christine Weideman, “Accessioning as Processing." American Archivist (Chicago: Society of American Archivists) 69.2 (Fall/Winter 2006): 282.
4) Carl Van Ness, “Much Ado About Paper Clips: ‘More Product, Less Process’ and the Modern Manuscript Repository,” American Archivist 73.1 (Spring/Summer 2010): 138-139.
5) Van Ness, 144.
6) Dan Santamaria, “Guest blogger: Dan Santamaria shares some thoughts on the recent MPLP discussions” (August 21, 2009), viewed on February 16, 2011, at http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=332.
7) Colleen McFarland, “‘It Changed My Life:' Lessons Learned from Minimal Processing,” presented by Colleen McFarland at the Midwest Archives Conference Fall Symposium, October 2006 (viewed on February 20, 2011, at http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/lonearr/resources.asp).
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Website Review: University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska Film Archives
In the first of what is hopefully many website reviews to come, I introduce you, my readers, to the Alaska Film Archive (AFA) at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Let me first start out by saying as an archivist with many films of my own to preserve that of all the states in the U.S., I would like to be in Alaska when in need of a cold-storage room for film reels! Anyway, the site is basic at first, which is not a bad thing: in fact, the simple structure allows discover of materials to be much less cumbersome than huge, fancy websites. Per their project's mission statement, the AFA:
". . . has built the largest collection of archival films in and about Alaska, with particular strength for the pre-statehood era. The current collection of films and videos combines hundreds of individual donations to UAF with films collected earlier by the Alaska State Library. Since 1993 these materials have been maintained in the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Department in Elmer E. Rasmuson Library. Our goals are to:
Locate and collect film and videotape pertaining to Alaska through donation.
Document the region, date and activities of each film.
Catalog each film or tape and make them available for viewing.
Store original materials in controlled environmental conditions."
The AFA has done remarkable outreach work in the process of identification of their films and the subjects contained therein. Particularly impressive is their cooperative work with native Alaskans and Eskimos to preserve the latter's cultural film heritage: "During the course of the project VHS tape of the films and more than 1100 still-frame photographs captured from film were reviewed by Native elders in six Alaska locations." Not only did the AFA gain immediate users and records requests from this outreach, but the Native Alaskans benefited through the united cultural identification experience. If nothing else had come of it, the archivists would have learned a great deal from the tribal elders about their people and experiences, useful in supporting the awareness and study of Alaskan heritage and native cultures.
From this collaboration came an identification list that is still being built regarding films that would have taken archivists years on their own to identify and describe. Because of the AFA's outreach, they have been able to make use of social networking, placing large numbers of samples of cultural films on their YouTube channel that has resulted in over 100 channel subscribers (quite a bit for an archives' video site), with 153,409 video views since the YouTube channel's creation in October 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/user/alaskafilmarchives).
All of the work the AFA has done with a state that has only been in existence since 1959, and with numerous cultural and economic issues facing them, is quite remarkable in their creative use of resources to promote their relatively remote archival films. Their mission is unique and they are going a great job with such a special project. You all should check them out:
library.uaf.edu/film-archive
-The Eclectic Archivist
". . . has built the largest collection of archival films in and about Alaska, with particular strength for the pre-statehood era. The current collection of films and videos combines hundreds of individual donations to UAF with films collected earlier by the Alaska State Library. Since 1993 these materials have been maintained in the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Department in Elmer E. Rasmuson Library. Our goals are to:
Locate and collect film and videotape pertaining to Alaska through donation.
Document the region, date and activities of each film.
Catalog each film or tape and make them available for viewing.
Store original materials in controlled environmental conditions."
The AFA has done remarkable outreach work in the process of identification of their films and the subjects contained therein. Particularly impressive is their cooperative work with native Alaskans and Eskimos to preserve the latter's cultural film heritage: "During the course of the project VHS tape of the films and more than 1100 still-frame photographs captured from film were reviewed by Native elders in six Alaska locations." Not only did the AFA gain immediate users and records requests from this outreach, but the Native Alaskans benefited through the united cultural identification experience. If nothing else had come of it, the archivists would have learned a great deal from the tribal elders about their people and experiences, useful in supporting the awareness and study of Alaskan heritage and native cultures.
From this collaboration came an identification list that is still being built regarding films that would have taken archivists years on their own to identify and describe. Because of the AFA's outreach, they have been able to make use of social networking, placing large numbers of samples of cultural films on their YouTube channel that has resulted in over 100 channel subscribers (quite a bit for an archives' video site), with 153,409 video views since the YouTube channel's creation in October 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/user/alaskafilmarchives).
All of the work the AFA has done with a state that has only been in existence since 1959, and with numerous cultural and economic issues facing them, is quite remarkable in their creative use of resources to promote their relatively remote archival films. Their mission is unique and they are going a great job with such a special project. You all should check them out:
library.uaf.edu/film-archive
-The Eclectic Archivist
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