archival processing and description

27
ARCHIVAL PROCESSING AND DESCRIPTION (Practices, Dreams, Realities, Projects)

Upload: michelle-belden

Post on 15-May-2015

4.304 views

Category:

Documents


4 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Archival Processing And Description

ARCHIVAL PROCESSING AND DESCRIPTION

(Practices, Dreams, Realities, Projects)

Page 2: Archival Processing And Description

Library vs. Archives Materials

Secondary sources Self-conscious

creations Items collected and

classified at individual level

Items described according to well-established standards

Primary sources Created in course of

business/life Items collected and

classified in aggregate

Description standards only recently established

Library (“neat”) Archives (“messy”)

Page 3: Archival Processing And Description

Library Archive

(Illustrated Visually)

Page 4: Archival Processing And Description

Archival Functions

Appraise Acquire Arrange Describe Preserve Make accessible

[For this presentation, we are concentrating on arrangement and description]

Page 5: Archival Processing And Description

Archival Arrangement

1) Variety: the only constant

2) Provenance

3) Original Order

4) Levels

5) Physical vs. intellectual order

Page 6: Archival Processing And Description

Variety is the spice of archival life

Collections vary greatly in size, format and complexity.

Page 7: Archival Processing And Description

Provenance

The context in which records were created is important to understanding historical significance, therefore-

The materials generated by one individual, organization or department should not be combined with the materials of another.

Examples: College of Agricultural Science Records Conrad Richter Papers Jack Rabin Collection on Alabama Civil Rights

Page 8: Archival Processing And Description

Original Order

Important in theory, but often violated in practice

Materials should be kept in the order in which they were originally created, maintained or used.

However, materials often come to us in no usable order.

Page 9: Archival Processing And Description

Levels

Collection, series, subseries Series often determined by subject,

function, or form Within a series, filing system:

chronological, geographical, alphabetical, etc.

Page 10: Archival Processing And Description

Intellectual vs. physical order One intellectual series could include all

materials on a selected topic, however those materials could be:

papers (one area of stacks), books (another area of stacks), maps (require flat storage), and photographs (require cold storage)

This complicates retrieval as well as arrangement and description.

Page 11: Archival Processing And Description

Describe

1) Standards – DACS

2) Methods- Database tracking Finding aids Catalog records

Page 12: Archival Processing And Description

DACS: Describing Archives, a Content Standard

Some of the elements addressed by DACS:

Required elements for different levels of description (minimum, optimum, added value)

Title formationForms of namesElements and examples of biographies and

collection overviews

(And much, much more)

Page 13: Archival Processing And Description

Database tracking (Oliver homepage)

Page 14: Archival Processing And Description

Oliver Screenshot 2 (HCLA collections)

Page 15: Archival Processing And Description

Oliver Screenshot 3 (collection-items)

Page 16: Archival Processing And Description

Finding Aids

Information contained: Administrative information (extent,

restrictions, etc.) Institutional History or Biography Collection overview Series Arrangement and Descriptions Box/folder lists

Formats: Can be Word, PDF, HTML, EAD

Page 17: Archival Processing And Description

Online Finding Aid Formats

No metadata tagged, but information still online

Findable through Google

Searchable through “Find in page”

Relatively quick and easy

Metadata such as creator, subjects, date ranges all tagged

Enables sharing with consortia and more precise retrieval

Takes more time/training to encode

Search software only in beginning stages

HTML EAD

Page 18: Archival Processing And Description

Examples

HTML: Robert T. Oliver papershttp://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/findingaids/1086.htm

EAD: T.R. Johns papershttp://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/findingaids/2/johns.frame.html

Page 19: Archival Processing And Description

Robert T. Oliver Papers Finding Aid Screenshot

Page 20: Archival Processing And Description

T.R. Johns Papers Finding Aid Screenshot

Page 21: Archival Processing And Description

Sample EAD code

<origination label="Creator"><persname encodinganalog="100" source="lcnaf">Coit, Margaret L., 1919-2003</persname> </origination>

<unittitle label="Title" encodinganalog="245">Margaret L. Coit Papers, <date type="inclusive" normal="1864/2003">1864-2003,</date> (bulk <date type="bulk" normal="1921/1999">1921-1999)</date></unittitle>

<bioghist> <head>Biographical Note</head> <p><persname>Margaret Louise Coit</persname> was born 30 May 1919 in

Norwich, Connecticut, to <persname>Archa Willoughby Coit</persname>, a stockbroker, and <persname>Grace Coit</persname> (nee Trow), the principal of a private day school. Two years later, Margaret's sister Grace was born with Down Syndrome. Caring for Grace would take up much of Coit's adult life.</p>

<p> At the start of the Great Depression, Coit's family moved to <geogname>Greensboro, North Carolina</geogname>, where Coit attended <corpname>Curry School</corpname>, a training school located on the grounds of <corpname>Woman's College</corpname> (now the <corpname>University of North Carolina at Greensboro</corpname>, or <corpname>UNCG</corpname>). </p>

Page 22: Archival Processing And Description

Catalog records

Page 23: Archival Processing And Description

The Dream

In the ideal “hierarchy of surrogacy”, we’d have finding aids for all collections that include item-level inventories, and catalog records that include collection-level summaries and point to those finding aids.

Collection (tracked by database) described by finding aid summarized by catalog record

Page 24: Archival Processing And Description

The cold hard reality (boo!)

At Special Collections institutions in general*

Processing time: mean of 14.8 hours per linear foot

Backlog statistics: 34% of institutions say more than half of their collections are unprocessed, 60% at least a third unprocessed

Page 25: Archival Processing And Description

(Cold, hard reality continued) At PSU Special

Collections: About 75% of our

collections are in the Cat About 30% of our

collections have finding aids

About 25% of our collections have neither (“hidden collections”)

Page 26: Archival Processing And Description

*Meissner-Greene

“More product, less process” (MPLP)

Sacrifice detail in order to describe everything at collection level first, so that researchers know what you have

Processing can be flexible, different levels between and within collections

“Good processing is done with a shovel, not with tweezers”

Page 27: Archival Processing And Description

Pertinent PSU Specoll Projects

Core records Make catalog records at COLLECTION level

for all

Finding aids Generate HTML finding aids from Oliver

Future plans New database system and more EAD