 Introduce to you your host Susan Barker. Go ahead Susan. Hi everyone. I'm glad to see you here it's the It's the end of summer. So you're gonna begin our fall session. I Have a few slides and then we'll turn it over to Sarah If you need disaster assistance Remember there's a 24-hour hotline and the number is right here. You can always call if you need help from for your Anything that happens flooding fires Whatever that they're there to help and If you have questions concerning the care of your collections, you can post them in the Connecting to Collections Care Community on the AIC website and this Their instructions on our website connecting to collections.org Slash discussions for joining that community. You don't have to be a member of the AIC and we are We're there to answer questions and So by all means take advantage of that you can keep up with us on Facebook and Connecting to Collections Care if you have Problems or suggestions you can contact me. This is my email address We used to have a listserv. The listserv has gone away and so you need Facebook or Twitter or To be a member of the community. I also post Announcements in a few lists, but we no longer have the C2C the announce list And coming up the beginning of October we have a practical book repair that should be fun And then we're going to have a course throughout October called cleaning the museum with damage and if you go to our website and Click on the banner as you can sign up or register for those We'll turn it over to Sarah there are quickly. Hi everybody I My name is Sarah Quigley and I'm the head of collection processing at the Stuart abro's manuscript archives and rare book library at Emory University That means that I supervise all processing for both our manuscript collection and our university archive And I work with our curatorial team our university archivist and our reference staff to prioritize collections for processing And I also work closely with our a sessioning archivist to impose initial control on new acquisitions and do some baseline processing At Emory we currently have two permanent staff responsible for processing one of whom is me and We both also do quite a bit of a sessioning work We currently have two visiting archivist devoted to special projects And I mentioned this really just to emphasize the point that even though Rose library has a decent size staff overall Our processing staff is actually really small and we put a lot of thought into how we can efficiently maximize our productivity When it comes to a sessioning and processing and making our collections available And I also taught arrangement and description for two years in the Clayton State University master of archival studies program, and I'm one of three current instructors for SAA's arrangement and description fundamental workshop I'm really pleased and honored to be spending a little bit of time with you today And I hope you'll all learn at least one thing for me while we're together And there are some handouts that Susan has uploaded We're only going to talk about the work plan and in the next hour The others there is a list of resources that you might find helpful there is a The work plan template that we use here at the Rose library As well as to finding a template that we use one is for collection arranged at the series level and one is For collections with no series at all It looks like maybe only one of them are one of them got uploaded twice So they should definitely be different and if they're not then we'll figure that out And then also I shared two complete finding aids for two collections One with file level arrangement and description and no series and one with series level And series and file level arrangement and description and I Provided these really just for your own reference And if you have any questions about them specifically then we can Talk about that at the end So before we get started, I do have a couple of caveats One is that this is my first time ever teaching a webinar so and I hope that everything will go well and That you all will be kind and generous with me and the second is that I have a cold And so I'm going to try not to sneeze all all over this place, but If anything does go awry You can direct all negative reviews to the makers of dayquals. Okay, so let's get started Hi, that's that's me with classic looks in my hair. I always forget that I do a hello slide during my introduction Okay, so our agenda for today. I'm going to talk a little bit about what my goals are for this webinar We're going to spend about Half an hour on arrangement half an hour on description and then I've saved 30 minutes for your questions There are a whole lot of you registered And I know that You will likely have a lot of questions, so I wanted to save plenty of time for us to address those So my primary goal for this webinar today Is to give you enough of an overview that you can start to think through processing at your home institution 90 minutes is hardly any time at all for us to spend on the topic that can easily fill an entire semester I can't teach you everything that you may need or want to know about archival processing in this Time and space, but I think I can teach you how to approach a processing project And to think through the kinds of decisions that you have to make So we're going to cover a lot, but it's going to be pretty basic And we may not be able to get as deep into some of the topics or elements that As would be ideal So like I said, I saved the last half hour for your questions And I hope that you'll use that time to ask me about anything I didn't cover or about something that I scammed over quickly and you need more clarity on I'm also going to put my email up at the end And I sincerely invite you to email me any time with questions or to bounce around ideas especially if you're in a small shop and you don't have And access to a lot of co-workers that you can sort of talk through problems or ideas with And as Susan said, we're monitoring questions. If there's anything that I need to address As we go, I'll be happy to do that if you can't hear me or Don't know a word I use or something Otherwise we'll do questions at the end So what is archival processing? Processing is essentially a Dargony umbrella term that encompasses both arrangement and description of archival materials a Collection is considered process When an archivist has imposed enough physical and intellectual control to facilitate access and So that could be minimal processing that could be item level processing depending on the circumstances and what you have Arrangement is the process of organizing materials with respect to their provenance in original order To protect their context and to achieve physical and intellectual control over the materials When we arrange We identify intellectual patterns and create matching physical patterns We can also describe arrangement as the identification of natural aggregations within collection or the imposition of Artificial aggregation and the corresponding work of physically organizing those aggregations Description is the creation of an accurate representation of a unit of archival material by the process of capturing collating Analyzing and organizing information that serves to identify archival material and explain the context and record systems that produced it When we describe we create a surrogate document that represents the arrangement of A collection and includes biographical information Soap and content and various pieces of administrative information such as use and access restrictions The descriptive document is often the user's first access point to the information resource Arrangement and description are often discussed as sequential functions first you arrange and then you describe and Even though I'm going to talk about them separately for the most part and I want to emphasize in reality Arrangement and description happen concurrently You arrange while you describe or you describe while you arrange and the most important skill in my opinion that any Processing archivist can have is the ability to think of these two functions in tandem So why do we arrange and describe? First to establish authenticity to demonstrate that materials are what they say they are By compiling evidence of the origins of the material the chain of ownership and the completeness of the collection Also by preserving provenance in original order We arrange and describe to establish intellectual and physical control Physical control is the function of tracking the storage of records to ensure that they can be located This includes arrangements as well as shelf location usage whether in the reading room on hold for a patron receiving conservation treatment on exhibition or any other youth being made of the items Intellectual control is the creation of tools such as catalogs finding aids and other guides that enable researchers to locate materials relevant to their interests Intellectual control also provides the means of identifying And material with a pointer to where those materials are stored Physical control ensures that the records are in fact where that pointer specifies We arrange and describe to facilitate access both for researchers and for ourselves To enable us to find information that we need then to retrieve it The job of the archivist in this case is to bridge the gap between the creator and the user and Finally arrangement and description are sense-making functions The work of processing enables researchers to understand both the content and the content of the collections in our care So let's start with arrangement The two primary principles of arrangement that you're probably already familiar with are provenance in original order provenance Sorry, just checking my slides Provenance is the origin or source of something Or information regarding the origins custody and ownership of an item or collection in Practice the principle of provenance requires us to retain collections as discrete entities This means that we don't intermingle documents from different creators or different collections Original order is the organization and sequence of records established by the creator of those records in Practice this principle dictates the amount of intervention the archivist needs to provide Professional best practices state that original order should be retained as evidence of the creator's life and use of the collection and to retain Original internal relationships between documents and aggregation These are the most significant principles of arrangement because they protect the context of the collections and the relationships reflected in the document Preserving provenance in original order allows us to confidently state that the records are what they purport to be They're authentic and the information and evidence they contain is reliable Another principle of arrangement is that there are levels of arrangement In archival theory, there are traditionally five and they tend to be hierarchical The first is the repository level Or your institution the archives and its collecting areas or functional division for the rose library that is University archives and our manuscript collections that we acquire from outside the university The next is collection level Or an individual body of records with unique characteristics created by an individual or organization in the course of conducting business Third is the series level or the intellectual aggregations of material within a collection usually according to function Subject physical form or filing unit Collections can also have sub series which are further divisions of the series within a collection That is not an official level according to Oliver window homes whose five levels of arrangement this all comes from Force is the file level or organized units of records used and kept together because of their relationship and then finally Item level and which are individual records or documents And it's easy to sort of visualize these as Nesting doll toys and you know with the sort of largest on the outside and the smallest on the inside and on this side I have an example of each of these levels from the rose library So within our university archives, we have a collection of student and academic services records Within that is a series called general office files Within that is a file called student services staff meetings and within that a meeting agenda The key point that I want to make here is that any level of arrangement from collection to item is Acceptable and it is an acceptable level of arrangement to provide for any collection within your holding Not every collection requires the same level of arrangement and we'll talk a little bit in a minute about how to decide What a collection does require So there are some things to do before you actually begin physically arranging material within a collection The first is to conduct some background research and then a thorough collection assessment and I encourage everyone to adopt the use of work plans if you haven't already I Don't know about Y'all, but I don't know everything about every single collection that we have at the rose library. So Before I start any project. My first step is to find out as much as I can about the creator of that collection Who they were what they did why they are important why we have their materials and you're going to need this information For the finding aid eventually any way But who the person was or what the organization did will affect your processing decisions You're unlikely to arrange a writer's collection the same way you would arrange a photographer's collection That consists mostly of prints and negatives and so starting with knowing Who your creator was and what they did will influence the decisions that you make later I'm knowing as much as you can know about the creator also Enables you to identify the material that you're looking at. So if you know that the creator of the record served on a particular board Then you know what the function of that material in the collection really was as opposed to them just having Acquired material by happenstance or it having been Having originally belonged to someone else in their life the next and most important step is To do a thorough collection assessment that Includes identifying provenance and original order first and foremost so Provenant should have been documented during the acquisition and the sessioning process And you should be able to confirm that provenance by reviewing your collection files and comparing them to the physical evidence in the collection and you can ask yourself a number of questions to Identify provenance who created the material. Is that the same as the person who donated the material? Can you trace the custodial history and any physical changes this may have caused to the collection? So if the donor for example is the child of the record creator and they Try to do some organization of the material themselves before donating That is good information for you to have It helps you determine what might be original Original order and what isn't to determine original order You can ask yourself if there's an original inventory included with the collection documentation Either created by the creator or the donor or the archivist to pack the collection for transfer Are there original file folders are the relationships between documents still identifiable if there are not file folders We have one donor who for reasons. I will never probably understand and Removes all the folders before he sends us stuff. I see he must know that we'll probably replace them And so we tend to get boxes from him That are a little bit like an Archaeological excavation you can see in the layers what material belongs together And like what likely had been Soldered together in his home office, but it arises just sort of a stack of papers in a box So I'll say this a few times before you do anything you want to look at everything or as much everything as you can I Nentioned earlier that retaining original order retains the creator's original relationship to the material and the relationship between the document It's also a critical time saver for archivist And it saves a lot of time spent angsting over arrangement schemes as well as really labor-intensive tasks like sorting and Foldering But what do you do if there is no original order? Sometimes there isn't or at least there isn't a helpful original order And I'm not a proponent of original this order as a useful state another example from Emory and is Salman Rushdie whose papers we also have and Once he gave the bulk of his material to us, and we process that material And and he saw sort of how usable the collection was after that He said that his filing system now is just a box on the floor by his desk The when he's done with a paper or file he puts it in the box and when the box is fully put that box in the closet and eventually We'll send us an addition So that's technically our original order But it's not helpful. It's not helpful to our users. It's not particularly helpful for us And so that is not the kind of original order that I would advocate Keeping however be very careful to assert that there is no original order. It may be there But not be clear to you So if there are things like original file folders, I encourage you to be very conscientious about Dismantling those original files You can attempt to recreate the original order, but this is only really possible if it's obvious what that order was and the Example I mentioned earlier with the donor who removed all his files before he sends us that all his folders before he sends us that That is the case where original order can be created, but it's not always easy You can also impose an arrangement scheme that reflects the creator's life and work and makes the material intelligible and accessible to your research researchers This is usually based on form. So correspondence photographs creative work, etc Again, don't do anything that you can't undo until you're confident that you're making a sound decision And then document what you didn't and why that's where the work plan comes in handy and the next step of the collection assessment is a condition assessment and Possibly a physical inventory So this likely will be done concurrently with determining original order and in this step you're asking yourself What the physical condition of the collection is Currently, so how is the collection arranged? alphabetically chronologically not at all How is the collection house and old acidic folders and new relatively stable folders that maybe you don't have to replace Is everything in an envelope? Are there preservation or conservation issues? That will need to be addressed is their mold or water damage rusty hardware did some Kindful think they were being really helpful and put everything in a binder and then while you're working Create a basic physical inventory at each box. This would be broad in general correspondence minutes teaching files drafts of a particular work and We're not talking about an inventory at this point that includes file level transcription or anything like that. This is just High level to help you determine what Whether you need series and what those series might need to be It can be as simple as post-its on the box or temporary eventually you're going to take them off and or a brief list on paper If you can do this while you're packing the collection for transfer if that's something that you do You will save yourself a lot of time If you can ask your donors to do part of this then you also will realize some significant time saving And then if you can do this during a sessioning and not as a separate task Then again, you will have saved yourself quite a bit of time The next step then is to determine the level of arrangement and description based on What you have learned from the collection collection assessment? Maybe this is where you stop this is at this stage We're at what we would call collection level arrangement and that's part of minimal processing or MPLP This is baseline and it is acceptable to stop here. You have a brief inventory of each box And you know who your creator was and you can make a finding aid from that This is the minimum required by professional standards and the new death principles Which were adopted this year actually require every collection in an archive to have at least this level of arrangement and description This is where I recommend that everyone start They find is better than nothing and Once the collection is accessible then you statistics can tell you if there's enough demand or if the collection Or if the condition of the collection is that's to require more arrangement If there is a need for more granular arrangement, your collection is likely large and complex Large and complex collections can Often be difficult to navigate without additional intervention from an archivist Collections that lack original order often require at least some additional intervention as well a quick Sort into categories a little bit a physical reorganization. It does not have to be at the item level Collections that have significant preservation issues also may need a more granular level of arrangement because they require some stabilization One example I Can think of one We don't sleeve all of our photographs, but we do have some guidelines for when we do and we have a tendency to acquire a lot of them and a lot of photographs I mean and We recently got a collection in where every photo was in a yucky old sleeve that the donor had Put on or the dealer had put on whenever she acquired it from and there was mold on everything And so before I could make that collection available. It had to be clean and then everything had to be refleeved and Then I could process it and sort of make it available in the reading room and that is not something that I would do with every collection and If access can't effectively be provided at the collection level Or even at a series level an example of this is audio-visual material It's really hard to provide significant access to Found in video recordings if you do not have an item level inventory It can be done, but it's hard and And you know, please don't arrange to the item level unless you absolutely have to file level is almost always sufficient and Like I said with the exception of AV material, which can be more difficult to provide access to so the chart on the screen is a Quick reference guide to levels of arrangement. And this is what we use here to sort of How are us to guide us in deciding what actions we provide at a Given level so at the collection level Material is often less than its original order. We may rehouse it into a different box. We don't refold our material We do a quick check for mold and other Conservation issues At the series level we are often doing more physical rearrangement so that every thing that belongs in a particular series is physically together Again, we're rehousing and checking for conservation issues and Then I'll I'll let you Read the rest. I think you'll have access to these slides afterwards So then the final step is to identify and create the intellectual aggregation and These are groupings which could be series or they could be said series They may correlate to the functional areas of a person's life or an organization's business activity They could be format-based or document particular subjects interests or relationships An institutional or administrative records these units will often correspond to administrative offices or business functions and Personal papers units are more likely to correspond to different elements of an individual's personal and professional activity And they may also be based on documentary format such as photographs or born digital material When components are organized by format, it's generally for preservation purposes and to enhance access to material whose format is Inherently valuable in itself like photographs or because the creator maintained them separately in Very large collections components may be sub-categorized to reflect further intellectual divisions of material And because archival description is hierarchical Archival arrangement and description are hierarchical each level inherits the characteristics of its parent component Therefore if something is true of a series it must be true for everything in that series whether it's a sub-series or individual files For example a series limited to only creative works by a donor may contain different types of writings or artwork But it should not contain creative works by other individuals Similarly if a collection contains material created by a mother and daughter It would be inappropriate to title the collection the Jane Smith papers Rather than the Jane and Julie Smith papers or the Jane Smith family papers The most important thing Keep it simple Don't impose a lot of hierarchy that is not necessary If you have a two linear-foot collection it does not need series ever That is a collection where You can arrange at the file level you do not Need to impose a lot of additional structure on that collection to make it accessible Volume and complexity are the key decision points in Determining the level of arrangement that you really need in a collection If it's huge or if it's very complex Then theories and maybe sub-series are going to be really helpful for researchers to navigate through that collection If it's a large collection, but it's all correspondence Again a lot of structure and hierarchy is not necessary So work plans It can be or it can seem unnecessary when we're constantly trying to find balance and under resource context Or when we're on our own To do work plans, but they are important and I encourage you to do at least brief ones for documentary purposes They document our decision-making not just for ourselves and our colleagues In the present but also for our future colleagues. I'm sure we all have At least one experience where we're looking back at something and asking ourselves why on earth a particular decision was made And I know that we sometimes get that question from researchers And work plans can help us answer those questions They can also be really useful tools for communication particularly if you are um Managing student or volunteer processing assistant You can make the decisions and then share those decisions And a single document that everyone has access to I think they're also really helpful if you're managing the only process If you hours a week or every couple of weeks to help yourself remember what it is you've decided to do So this is an example and hopefully you can read it up. It's very small on my screen and The work plan that we use here at the Rose library We've created one that is flexible enough that it can be used with small collections or large collections and The handout you have is the template. This is one that is filled out and it includes Places to record biographical information and collection history The value research value and the reason we collected them acquired a particular collection current state preservation needs as well as Appraisal anticipated appraisal decisions and what the proposed arrangement will be And then if you have theories in a collection Uh This is this screenshot is not filled out, but then you can do a similar analysis for each series What level are you processing at? What how big is it? How much time is it going to take who's going to do it? What are your processing decisions? and Then at this point you are ready to move to physical arrangements which includes sorting Actually arranging and rehousing So go from something that looks like this Do something that looks like that and then finally to something that looks all beautiful and nice and organized Sorting is the process of physically putting the material into the aggregations that you identified during your collection assessment Again, you're moving from the broad to the granular During a first sort do not remove materials from their original enclosures or discard anything the focus here is on Identifying and understanding the groups of files and not on individual documents or even individual files within a grouping And this could be done concurrently with your collection assessment if you are confident enough to move stuff around If additional sorting is required Into a series or sub-series for example and that happens on a second or third pass through records as you refine your arrangement and description and as you have a better understanding of the material and context Processing often entails regular refinement of categories and groupings as your understanding of a collection increases and so on your screen you have a chart of what Four levels of sorting and a collection can look like so you have the collection in The first sort you're physically moving material into categories of correspondence subject files photographs administrative records Within the correspondence on the second sort you're moving things Into literary correspondence and general correspondence The third sort is when you would Be down more at an item level putting things in alphabetical or chronological order and then if necessary any additional arrangement in a fourth sort so a physical arrangement then is Once the entire collection has been sorted into these theories Then you can work through the process of refinement that I mentioned until you have discrete units of material that's appropriate for foldering and Then of course putting Those folders into some kind of an order alphabetical or chronological or whatever Some elements of minimal processing No preservation photocopying and I Think for newspaper clippings in particular that is less and less necessary That's paper and you're probably going to have to do that photocopying whether you want to or not Judicious removal of hardware, I would say only remove it if it's causing damage Not separating material by format So if a photograph is attached to a letter leaving that photograph in that letter together and not spending a lot of time Housing that photo in a different location and then avoiding item level arrangement. So not putting documents individually in order Rehousing is your last step. This is a preservation issue. This is not an arrangement issue and This is this our final stage to protect your material and Make sure the folders are full and the boxes are full. Don't leave extra space And in either a folder or a box that your material will slump It will become very difficult to use Make sure everything is properly supported acid-free document cases are not a requirement and On this in the photo on the left you see a bunch of page miracle boxes and The macro environment is stable enough that if you don't have or Don't need and more expensive acid-free boxes You can and get away with not having them and then of course labeling and numbering your folders and boxes Okay, I am Running short on time. So it may be that some of the description We skip and it'll be in the slide and Then as I said, you can get in touch with me directly if you have any questions So archival description is Focus primarily on aggregate It's different than bibliographic description because it is mostly concerned with context and is not item Focus on individual items In my opinion Description is the more important function between arrangement and description If you have to choose between the two choose description You can describe a collection's current state, whatever it is Your goal should be creating access and if arrangement is preventing you from doing that then refocus your efforts on describing the collection and making it available Finding aids are the most common forms of description in archives, but description also refers to a session record catalog record Inventories and descriptions created by curators dealers donors appraisers Anyone involved in the acquisition process? And it may be more or less detailed depending on the level of arrangement The conditions under which a collection is being arranged and the level of description that is sufficient to provide meaningful access to users So often in archives when our goal is access we're talking about sufficient. We're not talking about perfect. We're talking about what is the Basic minimal requirement to make something available The main standard for archival description is describing archives the content content standard or death And if you're not familiar with it, I recommend that you check it out. It's freely available online on FAA's website and this is the standard that Outlines the purpose of archival description as well as the principles that support that description and Provides guidance for writing the various narrative notes that you find in that finding aid And the principles have been Revised I mentioned that earlier and I've listed them all here, but I'm not going to read them all the ones in bold Are the ones that I think are the most important and Users are the fundamental reason for archival description like we're doing this for a purpose and that first that purpose is access and Because description privileges intellectual content in context descriptive rules apply equally to all records Regardless of format or carrier type Archival description must be clear about what archivists know what they don't know and how they know it We must document and make discoverable the actions that we take on records Each collection within a repository must have an archival description and archivist must have a user driven reason to enhance Existing archival description. So if you've started with something Arrangement described at the collection level Basic box inventory short brief note Then if you are going to do more to that collection If you are going to arrange it at the file or item level then it should be because users are using that collection a lot This is a chart for and Descriptions of the different levels of description. So as a collection level for us we have Record in the sessions database a catalog record in our ILS and a single And an EAD finding aid online We've done a general survey of multi-box collections and that is also listed at the file level There's collection level records that includes description of the creator the entire scope and contents of The collection and then more granular description that includes the file level container list, etc What is the minimum required description? To make a collection accessible Like arrangement description can occur at various levels within the same collection So it is entirely possible to have a list of file folder titles in one series and only a general Series level scope and content note and no file listing in another series And that determination is typically based on what you think is important in that collection and where you want to spend your time The level of description is generally determined very broadly during the collection assessment that you already have done But as you process you may learn something about the creator or the collection that influences your descriptive decisions certain materials such as Sound and video recordings again often require item level description for access other materials such as new paper clippings Do not require much description at all due to being commonly available outside of your repository It may also be prudent to focus descriptive efforts on components of a collection that are reflective of your collecting policies As high research value are especially complex or idiosyncratic or particularly illuminate something important about the creator And firstly other components of the collection may receive less description The minimum required elements required by DAF are and Mostly what DAF called identity element or the units of information that uniquely identify your repository and the collection The reference code element is the collection's unique identifier here We call that a manuscript number. It could be an a sessioning number whatever your collection number is The name and location of your repository The title element Which includes a combination of the name of the creator and the type of material in the collection so Generally either papers records or collection The date element Which are the dates of creation of the broad date span That the collection documents and the expense of the collection the name of the creator scope and content Access restrictions and The languages of the material so this is an example of Those elements that were in bold on the previous slide the creator in this case was Ophelia DeVore Mitchell The title is the Ophelia DeVore Mitchell papers the date element is 1937 to 2010 The collection number is MSS 1224 you can see the extent here and then the materials are entirely in English the conditions governing access element and This is an example this is Where you would record any information about how or whether Patrons can access the entirety or any portion of the collection So the DeVore Mitchell papers are open for use with the exception that use copies have not been made for all of the Audio-visual material in this collection We require advanced notice if patrons want to access AV material that has not been Digitized that's how we provide access that our use copies are digital surrogates So that we have time to get those items digitize an advance of their visit the scope and content element is I think the most important of the minimum required element and that is The note where you explain what the collection includes A Collection level note should apply generally to the entire collection. So you can do more specific Series or even file level scope and content notes if you need to further describe material within those aggregations that you've identified and The collection level scope and content notes should describe the primary source I have that collection including important names Important places and important topics that are documented in the collection. So this could include and the names of Individuals that were significant correspondence with your creators And it could include the name of organizations where your creator works and for which you have records that documents that work It could include topics that are well documented in the collection because the creator was particularly Interested and that topic we have when one collection of a man who was a poet. I think The like really obsessed with the Titanic. So we have like a ton of Titanic stuff in his collection Which is not necessarily something you would expect And so not only is there a lot of it and therefore Worthy of inclusion and the scope and content note. It's unexpected and I think the unexpected nature also Raises it to the level of being important for the scope note And the scope note should also describe any weaknesses Absences or gaps of coverage in a collection For another example, we have the papers of the only female president of the Black Panther Party Her collection and contains nothing related to the Black Panther Party And so it is really important to note that So that you're managing researcher expectations The scope note should also be brief. You don't have to write a ton. You'll write more if your collection is bigger and the Basic point is that you're creating access to the material and Helping researchers to have a general sense of what they're going to find there And It doesn't have to be fully comprehensive researchers are It's okay to require researchers to do some work and So this is this collection level scope note for the Ophelia Divor Mitchell papers the example that I have been using so far It says that it includes Correspondents personal papers and the records of her business and its various subsidiaries and I've listed all of them Then After that sort of introductory sentence, I Explain just a little bit about what each of those Record types documents so correspondence is personal and professional It includes invitations greeting cards business correspondence, etc Personal papers contain her awards and certificates identification passport financial records, etc Her business records consist of administrative records such as memoranda agendas financial records promotional material Such as programs and flyers for product and services The records documents the company's major functions and initiatives such as her Charm school courses booking models beauty pageants cosmetic sales and Also document a number as significant staff members and leaders within the organization and I've listed those and Here is an example of including a weakness, which is there is no significant documentation in the collection about Divor Mitchell's most famous clients. So she's really known for having represented Richard roundtree who played Jaff? And a number of others that I'm forgetting at the moment, but there is no material in the collection the documents her relationship with any of them There are no there's no correspondence. No photographs of them nothing And then also additional records of her involvement with various professional and political organizations And that's it like that's the bare minimum that you need to make a collection Available and that's not a lot. You see that most of those elements don't require a ton of work to complete If you are providing additional Description I Encourage the following notes so biographical note particularly if you are Describing a collection created by someone who is not particularly well known your biographical note may be the only way that Patrons know who that person was and that they are definitely the person they're interested in Arrangement and processing note Related materials note if there are any and other institutions Casodial history and source notes and appraisal notes, and I'll take just a few minutes to go over a couple of them And then we'll get to questions so Biographical notes should include The full name of the creator any name changes or pseudonyms Life dates and places of birth and death family information possibly parents spouses or partners or children and Occupations and significant professional achievements their education other significant relationships But be careful to make sure that your biographical note is focused on the context of the collection itself So and You may have acquired the collection for one specific element of the creator's wife and profession and Others elements are not as important and so you would focus the content of your note on the aspects of their life that influenced your acquisition decision and this is an example of a biographical note of Elaine Brown the former President of robot Panthers that I mentioned. I Probably mentioned that in here somewhere. I'm not going to read it But I haven't focused a lot on it because like I said, we don't have any material related to her work in the party but we do have a lot of material related to all of this other stuff that she did after she left the Panthers and Particularly in the realm of prison reform and a number of nonprofit organizations that she founded to advocate in that area So this is these are examples of arrangement and processing note the arrangement note is really simple and Just Explains the structure of the collection and so Let's just list the series It's different from a processing note. The processing note is where you describe Your interventions and the collection and this is not super common, but I really encourage Transparency and archival description. It's really important and could really affect the patrons interpretation of a collection to know What was done and by whom? so this note says and That it was arranged and described at the file level by which archivist And that the series arrangement was imposed by us But that the material within files was the creators original order The same with custodial history note This is one area where transparency can be really helpful The example on the screen actually is from a collection where the creator suffered significantly from mental health problems in her late life and most of her Papers and personal effects were destroyed In one way or another and so the fact that we have anything at all was very surprising to One particular researcher who wanted to know how on earth we came to have it in the first place It turns out that it was auctioned in an abandoned George facility auction a number of years ago and the person who bought it had it for a really long time until they realized what it was that they had and They sold it to the rare book dealer Glen Horowitz who sold it to us So that is just one example of the kind of information that you could put in that note that could be really meaningful for your researcher And then finally appraisal note Which are I think probably even less common than processing notes these days But we've been using them for a couple of years now, and I think they're also really important for transparency and And in this note we say which of our characters was responsible for the acquisition and as part of which of our collecting areas and then we enumerate any Weeding or appraisal that was done on the material during processing as well as who made those decisions Again, I think this is an area where transparency can really transform your patrons understanding of the content of the collection and And we haven't yet talked about through container lists or folder titles. And so just as you really briefed it And the title should reflect your overall arrangement scheme If you're arranging writing by a single author for example start with the title Make sure the first word conveys the content. That's likely how you're going to be alphabetizing those folders. So And the color purple common draft not draft common the color purple Otherwise, and you're alphabetized list everything that starts with draft will end up together Not everything that is about the color purple avoid abbreviations and spell out acronyms and will end on my most strenuous piece of advice never ever ever ever ever ever ever use the word miscellaneous and a title if You can't describe it. You shouldn't have it And it may mean that you have to do some item level arrangement and description that you did not want to do But miscellaneous is not a helpful term and I disagree very much with its presence and an archival finding aid Okay, so I think that's it for what I have prepared And this is my contact information here at the Rose library Contact me anytime and I don't see a ton of questions over here in this party a lot yet But hopefully you have some more because we have 25 minutes and We can get started with the ones that we have Susan Do you want me to read these or are you going to read them? I'll read them Let me see if I can get my scroll bar over here Um, okay, where are we here? All right? So description is the Creation of metadata Yes, Allison it is There are busing 10, I hope I'm pronouncing folks names, right? I apologize if I'm not Maybe you can provide him with folders. It seems like he wants to keep his folders He lives in Ireland and he doesn't Use email and he's very hard to get in touch with I Wish I could provide him with folders sometimes actually April Warren, can you give an example of baseline? I don't I'm not sure what you mean by Example I Could give you some Titles of collections that you could go and look at but the collection that is arranged at baseline processing or minimal processing is really a Very basic box level inventory So box one contains correspondence box two contains photographs You don't say correspondence to who you don't say photographs of whom are taken by whom And then a very brief in general scope and content note The very minimal amount necessary to make a collection Accessible if you want to see an example of that you can go to Google and refinding aids that will take you to our finding aids database and you can look at the Jeffrey Holder Papers Jeffrey Holder and Carmen's a lot a lot. It is quite a large collection but we Do baseline processing for everything regardless of size until such time as we have evidence that it needs more and so Even though that collection is large you can see what baseline looks like in that context Evelyn Siddler if the photos are in an album do you separate first? No, and I almost never do no matter what and a Lot of photo albums are yucky and cause damage, but they are also intentional objects created by the user And to separate them. I think damages a lot of original context If they're really causing a lot of damage or if the photos are releasing from the Pages then yeah, I might just find it It's more likely that I would in that case and do a little bit extra work to do My best to preserve that intellectual context With folder inserts or some photocopying or something, but it's rare. It's something that I think takes up a lot of your time and Doesn't necessarily get you a lot at what point do you do appraisal? Evelyn again all points and you should be doing appraisal at the initial point of acquisition If you can Sometimes it's hard. I acknowledge that But I encourage you not to acquire material that you don't want in the first place and then All throughout processing as you're looking at material on a more granular level than you can do weeding Or if the collection was not appraised before it was brought in then during that collection assessment You can identify larger Groups of material that you're not interested in keeping What is Allison young asked what is the difference between literary and general correspondence well in that example the creator was a writer and so literary Correspondents is correspondence between other writers and the creator And then general correspondence would have been everything else. I don't recommend doing that kind of Sorting in correspondence. It's a really hard to make those kinds of determinations It's useful as an example Visually to see like what the various levels of a sort can look like But I think Topical subdivisions of correspondence are often not helpful and particularly if you're doing something like professional and personal you know if a letter is four paragraphs of professional business and one paragraph is you know Updates on the family then what does that? What is that? My opinion is that correspondence is correspondence in your life is easier if you let it just be that Evelyn Fidler asked how full is to full for a folder? And I do not recommend filling a folder beyond the second Prescored line at the bottom And if your folder if the front flap will not lay flat then it's too full Password and call it collect and I'm never sure how you reconcile sorting with preserving original order Well, there are a couple of ways One is that if you are sorting maybe you're not preserving original order, you know as I mentioned Sometimes it doesn't exist and if it doesn't exist there's nothing to preserve and if you are preserving Original order Then it is possible that what has happened is Boxes have been numbered out of order or Material that intellectually belongs together with stored physically in different places in the donor's home and what you're doing is physically reuniting material that is Technically the same. I don't think preserving a disjointed original order is particularly valuable You can Totally okay But it may be to It may be better for researchers for your institution the physically reunite material that has been separated and Dean the bolt says you should be comfortable or you should comfortably be able to remove something from a box That's a good rule of thumb in terms of how much to fill. Yeah, the rule that I tell my students who work with me is that it's a Folder like a moderately filled folder if you pull it up the Folders around should be able to support it that won't work if it's really heavy But it should be full enough that it can support itself if you pull it out of the box a little bit Material is not something and you're not having to like wiggle it a lot to get it in and out If that's the case then it's too full A couple of questions you repeat the name of the description guideline describing archives a content standard and Otherwise often known as that and that you can Google that but it's also on the Society of American Archivist website What kind of cataloging software do you use at Emory? We cataloged special collections material directly in OCLC connection and then our ILS back-end is Alma I'm sorry. I've forgotten to mention the last the names of the last couple of people Vivian Lee select Says regarding that folks should be aware that there's an updated version that will be published by the spring It's in GitHub Yeah, I think probably if you own on the DAC page on the essay website, there's a link to it Catherine call it I have a hundred plus binders a photographic slide We assess in them with brief information Date from some subject some subjects for each binder now. I'm going to need to rehouse The binders are cheap and deteriorating that they do hold the sheets of slides together in mostly chronological order. Oh I looked at archival boxes with into Internal ring binders that they were out of our price range. Well darn that was going to be my suggestion and I Think you can probably folder them Of course, you know every seat of the slide from One binder will not fit in one folder, but you should be able to handle that and in your folder titling so Whatever the slider of Trip to San Francisco Folder one of four, right and I would I would recommend probably Replacing the sheets that they're in my guess is that they're not Great, but you can get some that are better from all under and or Other someplace that might be cheaper And Catherine Cornell II What do you do about saving original containers? I'm Sorry, Mark. I'm getting a lot of feedback Okay, well, I'm glad no one else can hear it We don't really save original boxes Keeping original folders is fine If you're not particularly if you decide not to refolder, which I encourage you to do if you don't have to It's we don't save original folders If we're with we are refoldering unless there is writing on them And then we handle that a couple of different ways and I Have a colleague who photo photocopies the folder. I think that takes too much time So I just took the original folder in the back of the new folder And Catherine Pranelli again, what database do you use? I don't know what database you're asking about We're asked again, and I'll try to get to it Happy haul. Can I get a certification of attention? I don't know what that means Asked again, and I'll try to get to it Elizabeth these are I'm watching with new interns. Can you explain the difference between papers records and collection? Absolutely papers are collections created by individuals and or people Records are collections created by organizations and collections are artificially Created collection so and either a donor collected them we have a collection of photographs that were collected by the same individual or your institution collected it and Gretchen wit the term appraisal then is used for research value not really potential monetary value Well, it's used for both I used it here to mean or to refer to research value Because monetary value doesn't really have a lot to do with arrangement and description if your institution does appraise for monetary value or I Mean we do we do do we don't do appraisals ourselves We can't do that, but we do have materials appraised because we do a lot of purchasing And we work with professional appraisers to do that How do you find linear feet in a collection Shelby Miller the easiest way is that a record center carton is one linear foot a Acid-free document box is Half a linear foot those measurements are not exact But it is a quick and easy way to calculate and Yale. I think has a linear foot calculator On their website somewhere, which you can probably Google Heather Otis with archival collections. What is your opinion of removing photos from sticky albums or preservation? Purposes does it outweigh original order principles? Yeah, hopefully my question earlier or my answer earlier address that question enough I don't think it does unless it's absolutely necessary Heidi Sheldon what about items found in collections items that clearly belong together, but that you have no idea where they came from I'm the first archivist at my institution previously things were placed in boxes with items of like size not necessarily from the same donor Lots of missing paperwork in mystery papers and so I'm so sorry Heidi that sounds stressful and I think if you can Prove that material should be reunited then You're safe to do that Poor decision-making from our past colleagues is not Something that we are bound by And my approach is it were me would be to try to do as much as I could Confidently reunite and save this dickier questions or laugh and then Work with the other folks in your institution to either try to identify them or Provide access to them individually and being really transparent and honest about the fact that there is Custodial history and provenance that you don't have Which is I think about the best advice I could provide without knowing more about the specific material And Lindsay Neil what is your process for scrapbooks that are pasted photos that are pasted in along with news clipping and I Disbind That books even less than I do photographs Even more than photographs scrapbooks are as particular and unique intellectual object that was created with intention They're often also in like not great shape So we're lucky to have a conservation office in the building that I can work with Stabilize that material and provide appropriate housing. I Do remove loose stuff and describe it as loose material removed from that? scrapbook but my Instinct is always to leave them in tax Eve Wayman, how do you put captions with photos? Do you mean if I am identifying the photo If I am identifying the photo and there's no original identification You can write lightly in pencil in the margins on the back You can also Use folder inserts or Arrange them at the item level one single photo and a folder and do the identification in the folder title Katie Gutman, what do you mean by appraisal specifically? Is that getting rid of unwanted material? Yeah, in part It's also not acquiring material that you're not interested in in the first place Lou Charles, what is your suggestion for cleaning books exposed to mold and mildew? I don't have any because I'm not a conservator we Sometimes if there's just a spot we'll use like a microfiber cloth to wipe it off But if we have to have material cleaned I bring in our conservation staff. I'm sorry I can't answer that question any better than that April Warren, what if you have no idea where most of your collection came from? I'm a cataloger, but I'm trying to fill the void at my institution which goes back to 1884 We have lots of stuff and it's hard to know where to start in the organization process Some of our items have a box level inventory some have a file level Some have none. How do I start? Note that our library is being renovated and everything's in storage We'll be moving into a new space in about a year. Are there any basics you recommend we purchase? and regarding where you start I would start with the Material that has no description and get at least Basic description for that material Not knowing where most of it came from I think is not Shouldn't stop you if You're in a slightly different situation from the person earlier and have At least collections housed together You can be transparent about the fact that you don't know what the provenance of that material is and still describe it and make it available and Because my guess is that most of the stuff that you don't know where it came from is actually older than whatever your state Abandoned property laws are so you should be okay without having documentation New space. Are there any basics you recommend we purchased for processing the real big tables are helpful and You want to be able to spread out. I would also If you can encourage you to have some folio shelving in your processing space so that you can store oversized material Nearby while you're working on it And Yeah, big tables and lots of shelving. Those are my basic recommendation Alana Donikov and in regards to sorting what if the material is a mix of documents in the order? They were created by correspondence photographs and sheet music I'm gonna assume you mean Correspondents photographs and sheet music All related to the same thing like sheet music for a song that was performed photographs of that performance and correspondence Planning that performance in which case that is a subject file and everything can stay together If it's just like loose items in a box I Don't know that I would even confidently say that that was the order that they were created in and and you know Like I said original disorder is not Original order and so it isn't fun to have to sort at the item level, but sometimes we have to Jamie Ross do you have any recommendations for handling legacy collection? We have collections that were processed years or even decades ago with varying levels of description many Many of these collections were partially processed and then that processing was abandoned How would you treat them as new collection as new collections are handled in somehow differently? Um, I wouldn't handle them at all probably. I mean the ones that have Mmm, that are partially processed. I might try to finish um, but if they have any Minimum amount of arrangement and description you can still make them available and focus your efforts on new collection and Outside of trying to provide and impose a minimum amount of arrangement and description I don't think recon projects are super As the best use of our time necessarily if there's something about that collection That is making it hard to use because it's only partially processed and it's getting used a lot then Maybe just do some Schedulant for file-level processing and make those decisions on a case-by-case basis Brexian wet if the old folder is aesthetic would you see for discard and Eventually just hard at What if doing baseline processing? I don't know if I would spend a lot of time re-bouldering But if I were doing file-level arrangement, then I would probably throw them away And if it was really a critic and it had writing on it, then I would copy it and get rid of it Audrey Lamar Where do you see valuation of books? DVDs to know the historical value and There are To know historical value I mean This is a hard one to answer. I'm sorry. I'm struggling with that and my experience is dealing with Appraisers to provide monetary value. I think it's up to you and your institution to determine historical value and I'm not sure that that is worth Contracting with an outside person to tell you And unless you're having trouble identifying something In which case there may be subject air expert in your air in your Geographic area In which case I would reach out to them If it documents the topics and periods that your Institution collect then it has historical value Okay, I Think that's the last one and it's only 332 so again Give me an email if you have questions that I didn't get to Thank you so much for joining us. I have really enjoyed the last 90 minutes and I hope it was helpful Thank you for attending Seems as though Susan might be having some issues with her audio. So I apologize for that But thank you so much Sarah for taking the time to go over this with us and am I on now? Yes, you're on now. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you everyone for being here I will add some links and I will also add a couple of links to some of our past webinars there's one on Objects that are found in archives and how to deal with them and Thank you very much. We'll see you October 3rd for basic book repair and By all means if you're interested in the housekeeping Webinar, I mean course do sign up for that And like all our courses it has a small See and we're still in the Discount Time so By all means check that out. So we'll see in a month. Thank you very much Sarah. Thank you Mike and