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).