Ashley Levine
Archivist/Digital Resource Manager
Artifex Press
Editor, SOLO
alevine@artifexpress.com
Dear Lone Arrangers,
I follow our section’s listserv pretty religiously, and can attest to the fecundity and variety of the ongoing conversations (just take a look, for example, of our summary of Meg Miner’s post about policy language for access and reuse of analog materials in the archives in the current issue!). That being said, I also spy on a few other section lists, and in early January, read an excellent post on the Manuscript Repositories Section Discussion List by Jane Gorjevsky, the Digital Assets Archivist at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Jane offered this thought provoking problem regarding unprocessed collections:
“I am trying to compare the policies of different archives and manuscript repositories on exposing their collections that have not been processed (even minimally).
I am specifically interested whether your repository
a) creates public basic collection-level records upon accession
b) publishes a list of unprocessed collections on their websites
c) provides publicly accessible information about their existing unprocessed collections in any other way (please specify).”
Jane received 15 replies in total, from 11 institutions of higher education, 2 State archives, and 2 Public Libraries respectively. Jane found that the overwhelming majority (11 out of 13) of the respondents provides (or intends to provide in the nearest future) publicly accessible information online via (a) their OPAC or (b) their website. This number includes all institutions of higher education with only one exception; in the latter case the respondent indicated that they are planning to make their unprocessed collections more visible to researchers. Jane concluded that, in general, there exists a great popularity of the “accessioning-as-processing” approach and allowing access to unprocessed collections, whenever it is practical and legally permitted.
This got me wondering: How similarly are us Lone Arrangers doing things? Do we face unique challenges with providing access to unprocessed materials?
So, with Jane’s blessing, I would like to pose these same questions to the Lone Arranger community. I believe the encompassing issues affect archivists in a diversity of settings, and are especially salient for those of us working alone, or in very small staff situations.
Please reply to this post in the comments section, as to whether your institution employs any of the following approaches to exposing unprocessed materials:
a) creates public basic collection-level records upon accession
b) publishes a list of unprocessed collections on their websites
c) provides publicly accessible information about their existing unprocessed collections in any other way (please specify).
Further, I would encourage respondents to this informal survey to highlight challenges unprocessed collections pose for lone arrangers specifically. Is it harder to respond to research interest in unprocessed collections with limited staff? Does your institution employ MPLP or another approach for on-demand access to unprocessed collections? Do researchers typically appreciate having access to unorganized materials? Has your institution pursued funding for processing specific closed or backlogged collections? Please comment below!
