My next mission was to work through an unprocessed box of papers pertaining to the exhibition, Trade Routes, which we found yesterday.  I went through this reasonably quickly as the folders were mostly labelled and the material contained in each of them was somewhat straightforward without requiring any research.  When I had finished re-foldering and re-housing this material, I took it to the back room and then started where I left off yesterday on the chronological arrangement of the curatorial papers.

I arranged the exhibitions from the early to late 1980s.  I faced similar problems as yesterday with numerous boxes containing overlapping relevant material.  Throughout this whole process, I have been labeling and re-labeling the boxes, ensuring that there is a record of exactly which exhibitions are contained in the boxes, the date span, the materials etc.  Eventually, I did it!  We now have all (or I should probably say most) curatorial material from 1977 – 1989 in chronological order by exhibition, with clear labels stating the date and contents of each box.

To celebrate my Eureka! moment, I treated myself to a manicure to repair my nails from 2 days of rummaging around in the dust.

10.30 am – 6.30 pm
Total: 8 hours

She also talks politics with newly elected chairmen of Michigan’s Republican and Democratic parties, Bobby Schostak and Lon Johnson.

Michigan Matters Preview: 2013 MPLP Seg 1

Michigan Matters Preview: 2013 MPLP Seg 2

Michigan Matters Preview: 2013 MPLP Seg 3

Michigan Matters Preview: 2013 MPLP Seg 4

Tune in for Michigan Matters each Sunday at 11:30 a.m. on CBS 62 hosted by Carol Cain.

Get archived posts and video from Michigan Matters.

It took me a few more hours and at the end, I re-checked the order of the documents.  The re-housed folders all kept their original names.  The artist files are in alphabetical order. The exhibition files were kept together mostly in the existing order – it seems that a few different people kept files on similar subjects so I grouped the files together according to the subject, such as Grants or Check-lists etc.  Coincidentally some additional Trade Routes files appeared in another box entirely and I fit those in to sit in the appropriate order.

In the afternoon, Tara and I went to the physical archive and shelved some of the boxes I had worked on.  As I mentioned in the an earlier post, we are in the process of working our way through the curatorial documents from the 1970s to the present day.  The exhibition folders I have processed have so far been from the 1980s and 1990s.  It was extremely motivating to see the dent that we had made in the processing of the boxes – the nasty dilapidated boxes are rapidly being replaced with archival boxes with pretty neon post-its stating the contents of the boxes etc.  It is just a matter of time before we will have gone through all of the boxes and can start arranging them.

10.30 am – 6 pm
Total: 7 1/2 hours

The folders were in good condition but were losing their labels so we decided to rehouse them in acid-free folders in order to preserve the folder information and contents, and to scan for interesting items to digitize.  We decided to preserve the original order where possible but Tara asked me consolidate the files from other boxes into this collection, and to group according to the original order or to create an appropriate order where one was not apparent.

As I was processing the documents, I kept MPLP in mind and as these were in such good condition I hardly performed any preservation, only where items seemed particularly delicate.  As such, I was able to work through the boxes in good time. In deciding on an order, there were specific folders relating to the artists in the exhibition which were mostly in alphabetical order so I continued that order.  In going through the other files there seemed to be distinct groupings of folders relating to preliminary research and the planning of the exhibition.  I kept those together and slotted in the folders from the other boxes as appropriate.

I kept notes of my observations along the way, such as the names of the curators and prominent people involved, the dates of the documents and the exhibition, types of materials etc. for the time when a finding aid will be written.

“Trade Routes”, September 10 – November 7 1993, courtesy of the New Museum Digital Archive

10.30 am – 6 pm
Total: 7 1/2 hours

We took somewhat of an MPLP approach to this box, mostly because the materials contained in it from first glance were not specifically related to the New Museum and in terms of resources, we thought it best to allocate our time to New Museum specific-projects.  I determined during processing that Brian Wallis, the curator of series, following the success of Art After Modernism, had sent a letter in May 1985 to many artists requesting submissions of writing and works for consideration in Blasted Allegories.  The box contains folders of material submitted to Brian, as well as his own research material, organized alphabetically by artist.  I rehoused the collection in acid-free folders and boxes, mostly following the original order but for ease of reference I alphabetized folders where they were out of order.

As we worked through the box, it became apparent that these materials might well be of interest to researchers, given the number of submissions and the prominence of artists/writers. Tara asked me to create a finding aid, which will be an ongoing project over the next couple of weeks.  We also selected items for digitization.

Blasted Allegories: An Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists

10.30 am – 5.45 pm
Total: 7 1/4 hours

In preparation for my first day, Tara had sent me a couple of things to read:
Greene & Meissner’s More Product, Less Process
and, the New Museum Digital Archive Processing Guidelines.

For my first project, Tara selected an unprocessed box from the curatorial documents. We split the box between us and I worked my way through the various files, re-housing each file into an acid-free folders and finally re-housing the folders in an acid-free box. I also flicked through the contents of the folders, looking for things like press-releases, checklists, brochures and other interesting items which might be suitable for digitization. When I had gone through the box (reserving several items for digitization), I made a summary note of what exhibitions were contained in the folders that box for future reference – some interesting ones were “Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective” , and “Bruce Nauman Drawings: 1965-1986“.  I also looked through the boxes in archive to see if there were other folders on the same exhibitions and grouped them together as appropriate.

Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective – 11.20.1987 – 1.24.1988, courtesy of the New Museum Digital Archive

Today was a good day!  I enjoy working with Tara and the materials we are working with are very interesting.

10.30 am – 5.30 pm
Total: 7 hours

Transfiles file before processing, 2013

Hollinger box after processing, 2012

For most of you, the concept of “minimal processing,” its longer, slogan-like synonym “More Product, Less Process” or its acronym “MPLP” does not conjure adversarial thoughts. Why would it? Outside the archival community, nary a person knows they are impacted by a new wave of arranging and describing manuscript collections. But within the arena of archives, I dare you to mention any of the iterations above and leave the conversation unscathed or at least without having to endure a lengthy diatribe detailing the advantages and drawbacks of this new technique.

In truth, I think minimal processing is a great idea especially when working with collections like that of ACLS. This project uses the model of minimal processing that does, in fact, affect researchers.

This post focuses on the intellectual arrangement of the collection. The last post detailed the process of physically controlling the materials.

What is Minimal Processing?

I’ll spare you the archival history lesson (please refer to the Reading Materials page on the left sidebar for more information), but for a long, long time item-level processing dominated manuscript collections. This meant that an archivist handled every piece of paper or object, made preservation efforts for all potential issues, and would compose detailed descriptions of the content, scope, history and possibilities for cross-referencing in the collection’s finding aid, a road map to the collection. Thus archivists became experts in each collection s/he handled because of the sheer amount of time spent processing it. While this is a romantic notion, one that encouraged me to pursue a job in the profession, reality is much…busier.

We don’t live in a paperless world. Ask any archivist! World War I brought a boom in records and the voluminous era of the 1950s didn’t help either (Reto Tschan, 176). Since then, we have produced so many paper documents with the help of Xerox machines and printers into the mainstream. This is to say, modern records keeping is filled with, well, records! For archivists, this poses a major challenge.

How is it possible to keep up with collections–processing and access–in a timely manner?

Spoiler alert: It’s not possible.

In 2005, well-known archivists Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner published their findings of a multi-year study that focused on the ways in which the archives profession could get out from under the massive backlog that had accumulated while we maintained an item-level focus and the world produced a flurry of paper documents, tipping the scales in favor of quantity.  What they found is that every single institution carried a backlog of collections they could not process in a timely manner. That wasn’t the question. It was assumed, although they did reveal percentages of backlogs.  They remarked, “These large backlogs are hurting the archival profession in the eyes of our researchers and resource allocators (212).”

Instead, their central question was: So what are we going to do about it?

Processing the ACLS Collection, 2013

Processing the ACLS Collection, 2013

Processing the ACLS Collection, 2013

Rather than “tripling (254)” the number of  archivists in every institution in order to maintain traditional modes of processing , Greene and Meissner suggested a new concept called “More Product, Less Process,” at once a proclamation and instruction to the profession. This concept gave archivists license (and freedom) to move away from an item-level focus and toward a modular model. “We have been applying traditional approaches to a new problem…(211)”. The authors based their model on the notion that archivists have the freedom to decide the level of processing per collection as long we meet minimum levels.  And we need to shift our collective thinking:

[The archival profession needs to] own up to the limitations we work under and accept that the golden minimum recommended here…is all we can realistically accomplish…we could take comfort in the fact that we will be revolutionizing access to our holdings (255).

As an archivist, this means that with every collection I arrange, preserve and describe, I first evaluate its size, scope and the way in which researchers are likely to access it. After that, I create a plan that best suits the needs of the collection and those who will use it for research purposes. Sometimes it may have an item-level focus. Other times, it will have a broader, minimal focus. Which brings me to ACLS.

Why choose Minimal Processing?

In some instances, archivists do not choose to employ a minimal processing technique. Sometimes, the collections makes that decision.  The size and character of ACLS’s Part II collection is a quick indicator that it could probably hold up to minimal processing. For example, a large collection of personal papers, say of Waldo Leland, would likely be arranged and described at an item-level because collections of personal materials often have nuanced categories in which the materials fall and relate to one another. Further, Leland’s professional life spanned a long period of time and touched numerous professions, so his correspondence, drafts of reports and speeches and even memorabilia will probably be viewed by a range of researchers.

ACLS, as an organization, has broader categories into which the materials are contextualized: financial records, presidential files, reading files–each of these categories encompass large swaths of records. Moreover, ACLS developed these categories long before I came along, which maintains the original order of the records and offers a more organic transition from the creator (ACLS) and their records.

National Enquiry Into Scholarly Communication surveys, 1970s

Stanley N. Katz pamphlet, materials created 1988

NEH travel grant label, materials created 1980-1983

My work does not include handling every piece of paper, re-foldering all documents or removing every paper clip (for preservation purposes, I remove large attachments such as butterfly clips and some big paper clips). Instead, my work is a faster-paced. There are a few aspects to the collection, as it stands, that have allowed me to adopt this strategy:

• Good physical condition: For the most part, folders remain in tact and not overstuffed, different types of paper are all standing the test of time, and like materials sit near each other (photo upper left).

• Clear and accurate labels: This is a true gift! ACLS employees from the 1950′s-1990′s excelled at concisely and informatively labeling folders and boxes. In my daily work, I don’t have to spend much time searching through folders to understand the contents within and how they relate to nearby folders. This saves me time and ensures a more accurate folder label (photo bottom).

• Cashing in on caches of triplicates: Archivists are masters at spotting reams of identical photocopies, pamphlets or objects. Masters! When I think of organizational records, I often presume that the rate of triplicates is higher than the average collection (as a result of the function of the records). ACLS’ collection has proven me wrong. I save 2 copies of materials, when possible, and discard additional copies. Thus far, I have seen a low rate of triplicates, which allows for a speedier processing job (photo upper right).

How does this impact the ACLS Collection?

The most important aspect of minimal processing of the collection is at the intersection of physical control and intellectual arrangement. For the ACLS collection, it’s a simple adage to commit to memory:

Intellectual Trumps Physical

Traditional collections are physically organized in a way that is complementary to the intellectual arrangement. For instance, chronological files ranging from 1980-1990 will appear sequentially in boxes, let’s say 20-50. This makes sense both physically–the boxes appear next to the other and intellectually–we know that these files are chronological and should be read that way.

This collection will be arranged intellectually, but not physically. This is a direct result of its size. So, as an illustration, for several decades, ACLS kept handy records called Reading Files. They are chronologically-arranged documents of the important work generated for each month of each year. These files are beautiful! I processed files from 1974, 1975 and 1976. But, I didn’t yet have access to the files from 1977. So, instead I worked on materials from another category, Presidential Files, before I found boxes for 1977 and on. This means that physically, the boxes will contain Reading Files, then Presidential Files, then Reading Files again. And, in fact, there are far more overlaps than that example offers.

But fear not! The finding aid, the guide to the collection, is arranged intellectually. So, when researchers are looking for all Reading Files, s/he will have no problem associating the physical boxes, no matter their location in the collection, with the contents of those boxes.

Why does this matter?

Minimal processing allows me to process this large collection in far less time than an item-level job, which in turn, delivers the materials to the researcher more quickly. Rather than spending time sitting in our storage facility, the material history of ACLS can be used by researchers. Intellectual arrangement is privileged over physical organization to facilitate speeding up this process, while ensuring my control over the collection.

For those of you pursuing primary research in manuscript repositories, you have inevitably faced a minimally processed collection. In this situation, the onus is on the researchers.

• it is vital
• it is sometimes impractical
• everyone has a different idea of product and process

One main area — the evil metal paper clips and staples.  One person says, “remove them all it’s less process in the long run.”  Another person says, “assess and arrange – we’ll deal with binding agents another time.”  Yet a third person says, “assess and remove and arrange so we don’t have to go back later.”  I’m sure if there was a fourth person they would have had a fourth opinion.

Sound familiar?  I am certain it does to anyone who has had to deal with the Mommy Dearest aspect of archives — No More Metal Binding Agents!

What did I decide?  Well, I went with what felt like the middle ground at the time:

• remove metal paper clips from materials assessed as ‘Retain’
• remove metal staples if showing signs of rust or other damage
• clip with plastic clips or file together in their own folder

What do you do in your archives?

READY FOR SHOWTIME!!!. I had a FANTASTIC time collaborating with Cake and Dessert table designer Yanneris Genao, super chic hair accessories designer Sarah Betances from Stylish Givings, and oooh so fitting stamper and paperi designer Michelle from Enchanted Stamper with her super cute wooden spoon naughty msg stamps, and  lastly MPLP  crafted the satin backdrop, glaming up the table and the invitations

Guests were greeted with a delicious chocolate mouse and followed it with strawberry chocolate spice Martini, they then proceeded to get their glam up with some feather boas and Red rose Black pearl headbands. Through out the event, the guests did fun photo prop, pose with long cigarettes and enjoyed a fabulous strip dancer who finalize and added the closing flare to this Burlesque event.

This is a great team let me tell you. I’m very lucky to know and craft with women who can with just an item or a word spur out an entire set up and make it so harmonious.I can’t say enough about these girls, I truly look forward to continued collaboration and idea swaps are oh so much fun!

ENJOY!

Gracias

Mayra B

Collaborate event by Stylish Givings, Yanneris Genao, Enchanted Stamper and MPLP

In honor of the upcoming SAA conference in San Diego I wanted to address one of the sessions I attended last year. Although as a student during last year’s conference I was eager to jump in and learn what issues archivists were concerned about.  I chose sessions based on interest and this one in particular, Re-Arranging Arrangement and Description I chose because it pertained to a class I was starting that semester on Arrangement and Description.

In this particular session the concept of More Product Less Process (MPLP) was addressed. Admittedly I had to research the issue because everyone referred to it by its initials instead of the whole title. Interestingly enough the topic also tied into a Blackboard assignment I had for my class. Below is my response for the assignment on MPLP:

In the Greene and Meissner “More Product Less Product”¹ (MPLP) article the authors endeavor to promote the merits of a spending less time arranging the collection in an effort to open it to the users. This draws me back to the SAA Annual Meeting this year where a session was dedicated in part to this particular topic. Many of the panelists advocated for keeping original order with limited processing and allowing access through intellectual order on the collection level. Like Greene and Meissner the concept of a collection that is spread out making retrieval more difficult for an institution was brought up, but the panelists believed that the time saved in arrangement more than made up for the ability to find individual items.

Weideman, a proponent of Greene and Meissner, in her article “Accessioning as Processing”² pushed the MPLP idea further in starting the arrangement process with accessioning. She implemented a program for the Yale archives that enables donators to prepare their collection prior to donation. The process involves gathering as much information about a collection prior to donation as well as suggesting to possible donors to arrange their collection prior to donation. This physical arrangement would then be kept by the archives enabling the collection to be accessed by researchers all the more sooner.

Van Ness in his article “Much Ado about Paper Clips”³ argues that Greene and Meissner’s push to get professional archivists to process a certain metric quota of collections per year is off base. He notes that most professional archivists can only work on processing for a certain amount of time during the work week juggling other duties that come with the professional credentials. The majority of the processing work he argues is in most cases done by full time none professionals and a combination of student workers or volunteers depending on the archive. Here I can agree. I have had the opportunity to volunteer for the National Parks Service and University of Utah, and starting this week Utah Valley University to help process the collections that the professionals just do not have the time to do.

In my readings I have found that most agree that each collection should be handled individually and that all the rules and guidelines are merely that and should not be applied fully in every case or within an entire collection. Here too this can be applied to the principles of MPLP. While for some institutions and even within certain collections that are already in some sort of physical order the aspect of creating finding aids for the collection can be a priority, this will not work for all collections or institutions. No matter what there will always be institutions that will prefer to physically go through a collection prior to allowing the collection to be accessed. I agree with both positions that the processing is the biggest hang up to allowing access while there is a need for more hands to process those collections as Van Ness stated.

1. Greene, Mark A. Greene & Meissner, Dennis (2005).  More product, less process: Revamping traditional archival processing. The American Archivist, 63, 208-263.

2. Weideman, Christine (2006). Accessioning as processing. The American Archivist, 69, 274-283.

3. Van Ness, Carl (2010). Much ado about paper clips: “More product, less process” and the modern manuscript repository. The American Archivist, 73, 129-145.

As for how I will conduct the arrangement of the Highland City Library Special Collections and Manuscript Archive because we have such a small collection I will be accounting for each item individually.

So far in the arrangement class we’ve annualized the More Product Less Process (MPLP) approach to processing collections, and have begun work on a processing plan for a collection that is 2.5 linear feet. Last week the class had an in-depth discussion about MPLP and came to the conclusion that this theory isn’t going anywhere soon. MPLP allows archivists to quickly process a collection using minimal arrangement, description, and preservation and is ideal for any repository facing budget cuts and backlog, which in actually is most repositories. The collection we’re making a processing plan for consists mostly of correspondence of a Civil War surgeon who later became a prominent doctor and proprietor of a cranberry business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There are also some letters belonging to his daughter who most notably was involved with the ambulance corps during World War I. It’s a wonderfully rich collection and it’s really too bad that the entire class has to share it and will not actually be able to process it themselves.

My practicum of digitizing glass plate negatives, cataloging them, and creating a gallery on the Wisconsin Historical Society’s website is going very well. I’m approximately half way through with my hours, but have already decided that I will continue working on this project until I graduate. There are 1000s of glass plate negatives, the work I do in the next year won’t even make a dent in digitizing them. In fact, I’m just one in a long line of student workers to tackle part of this project. The negatives themselves make this project so worth while though. They produce stunningly detailed and rich images. Last week I scanned an image of a man sitting on a farming implement and I was able to scan all the way in to see the hairs on his hand. Why someone would want to see an early 20th century man’s hand hair is beyond me, but they can if they want to, the detail is that rich. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve learned the cataloging portion of this project and now the scanning protion as well. The last component to learn in the coming weeks will be how to create a gallery of preselected images for user to enjoy.

One of the components of the practicum course is to interview a staff member one managerial level higher than your practicum supervisor. In my case, that meant I had the opportunity to interview Rick Pifer, a veteran archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS). Currently he holds the title of Director of Reference and Public Services, but also oversaw Collection Development for many years previous. Below is the conversation Rick and I had yesterday about my practicum and the field of archives. Please note that Rick’s responses are my paraphrasing from notes taken during our conversation, unless specifically quoted.

Q. Do you have experience working with glass plate negatives?

A. None besides experiences acquiring them while in collection development.

Q. So far the digital lab has been able to primarily fund itself through the work they do, digitizing records and making them available for purchase through WHS’s website. Do you ever feel a tension between giving priority to records that have mass appeal in order to fund WHS, and giving attention to projects that may be more personally interesting?

A. Projects that are personally interesting are flawed and unjustifiable. From an administrator and public policy point of view, taking on projects because they are of personal interested is a bad reason to do so. It’s much more important to identify an audience and digitize, process, etc. what they find interesting. There is a difference between curators choice (relying on a curator to decide what would be most profitable for the repository to digitize, process, etc.) and personal interest, although they may be the same. WHS relies on Andy’s (director of the digital lab) judgment on what warrants digitization because he has professional eye for what is good. Good photography is always good photography and is generally of interest to users and archivists.

Q. WHS will soon be releasing a blog on their website. What are the primary goals of the blog as far as engaging users? What are the main concerns you have about beginning a blog?

A. The primary goals of the blog are to better connect to the community, give the public insight in to WHS’s vision, communicate better with users, and increase public awareness of the services WHS offers. All in all a more fluid communication. At this time there are no real concerns about launching the blog. From an administrator’s perspective, there are concerns of encouraging interest within the staff, writing diverse postings, and the sustainability of the blog.

Q. Do you foresee a time when finding aids and digitized images will become interactive on the WHS website?

A. There is a lot of resistance from librarians and archivists to embrace new technologies, but more participatory online features would be a great thing. When talking about commenting on blogs, finding aids, photos, etc. – are the comments really that important? Currently there is so little active use of participatory features; perhaps the idea is a bit too “Utopian”. Maybe future generations of users who have grown up with social media and participatory online resources will be more inclined to use participatory resources- in particular with scholarly research and genealogy.

Q. Do you see a generation gap between new archivists and veteran archivists in the way they view collections and users?

A. There isn’t a gap in face to face reference services and reading room etiquette. Where the gap seems to exist is in making the leap to digitization and using social media. Veteran archivists have a concern or belief that new technology is a bad idea. Youth tends to have an over optimism about the use of technology. A professional fear of being inundated with too many reference requests or work and losing control is what troubles many resistant professionals. As a result of this fear the WHS Library didn’t get email until 2000 (when Rick became Director of Reference and Public Services). As a manger you have to push the envelope and at least try, it’s better to be overwhelmed and the fix the issues then to not try at all.

Q. How do you think archivists should be handling continual budget cuts and backlog?

A. Concerning backlog, MPLP is the way to go. To put things in perspective, it takes 3 processing archivists to keep up with the records 1 collection archivist brings in. WHS has always allowed access to unprocessed records unless they are too fragile. There are major misconceptions about MPLP, it’s about making decisions for your repository and knowing that some collections will always deserve more detailed processing.

Budget cuts are a reality in good and bad times. You have to identify and preserve the core operations of your repository and not get side tracked by archival trends. The audience is the key, ask yourself if there is an audience for what you’re doing, and if not reconsider your resource allocation.  WHS’s audience is the University community and genealogist and so core operations are tailored to their needs. When making decisions about the budget, always use hypotheticals and ask yourself what the impact of your decision is. Archivists need to know the cost of their work, whether in dollars or time, to be able to make decisions about staffing and the budget. For example, knowing that paging records in the reading room is probably not the best use of a professional archivist’s time, and allocating the job to a student worker. Start with the data and go from there.

Q. In my short career I have already had several moments were records in collections affected me emotionally, how do you think archivists can best convey that passion and excitement to users? Do you think platforms like blogging, “I Found It in the Archives”, and Archives Month can help?

A. Any public relations tools within a repository like tours and talks will help spread that passion and enthusiasm. However, regarding archival description-making your passion known can be a dangerous thing. Archival writing is a type of technical writing and the emotion needs to be left out, regardless of how strongly in favor or opposition of the records you feel. In example, if you are processing the papers of a known Nazi, it is not the archivist’s place to write about how terrible the person was, it is the archivist’s responsibility to write an impartial document.  A more appropriate place for that emotion would be a blog posting.

Q. What direction do you see the archival profession heading in the next five years?

A. “Anyone who predicts that is a fool.” (Laughing)  In the future the archival field will likely be moving in two parallel directions. The first direction is that of digitization and digital records. In 1980 Madison had a conference on machine readable records, the message hasn’t changed since then, and the technology is just finally catching up. Archivists increasingly need to be able to speak with IT professionals about building operations for their department and avoid “ostrich like behavior” by ignoring changes in technology.

The second trend is how research is changing. Repositories are expected to maintain two different environments at once, a digital and online presence as well as a physical reading room space as collections will never be fully digitized. This dual environment affects everything. One example is researches using digital cameras rather than the copy machine to copy records. WHS had to adapt to that loss of revenue by charging to use digital cameras just as copy machines. Now researchers keep track of how many photos they take and are charged 7 cents per photo. Going along with changing environments, a third development is a redirected attention to virtual environments such as offsite reference (email reference).

What’s not changing is archivists are still navigators of records, even in virtual environments, and users still need their expertise to navigate collections. Basic skill sets and thinking required to be an archivist are not changing. The formats may change but the skills necessary to be an archivist are not.

Q. I know you encourage students and professionals to always keep reading and writing about the field, and that some staff members here at WHS have published articles and presented at conferences. Are employees at WHS encouraged to contribute publications and present at conferences? How do you recommend finding a subject matter to write or present on after grad school?

A. WHS encourages staff to go to professional development by paying 50% of their attendance, or 75% if they’re involved. Mostly, the outcome of being involved in conferences or publishing is for you, but it can pay off in position elevation.

Writing about work you do is the best way to get started when you graduate. Join archival organization and committees because they build your network and credentials. Most importantly if you’re not engaged in your profession you won’t evolve. How else do you stay interested in what you’re doing after 30 plus years?  It’s also important to know your cohort. Attending conferences together and building friendships is a great way to gain friends you enjoy being with, plus as your careers progress you’ll succeed together.

Q. How has the field of archives changed since you began your career? Have there been in changes in theory or practice that have really taken you by surprise?

A. No, because of professional meetings. New trends show up at professional meeting long before they hit the literature or become part of practice. It’s part of evolving.

Q. What do you enjoy most about your career?

A. Being a builder of programs and systems.

I met Ari tonight, the other Ari. The Ari whose former job I’ve always wanted – in fact, the Ari whose former job my Ari has always wanted. Luckily I was able to snap a shot of my two favorite Aris (or is it Ari’s, or Aries? Hmmm). Anyway, the other Ari was the guest speaker at tonight’s MPLP annual dinner and as an alumnus of the program I had the great fortune to attend.

If you read Saturday’s article in the Washington Post, you’ll learn that “All of the backlogged documents date back 25 years or more, and most are Cold War-era files from the departments of Defense, State and Justice, among other agencies. The CIA manages the declassification of its own files.”  and that ““The current backlog is so huge that Americans are being denied the ability to hold government officials accountable for their actions,” [AOTUS David] Ferriero said. “By streamlining the declassification process, the NDC will usher in a new day in the world of access.”

If NARA is really trying to declassify, process, catalog, describe, preserve and make these pages available, I hope they’re planning on hiring some more archivists!  The problem is that when institutions are dealing with mass quantities of materials, the (quantitative) metrics we use, may actually hurt us in the future.  In the archival world, the prevailing wisdom seems to be MPLP (More Product, Less Process), but I would argue that archivists need to have qualitative metrics as well, if only to ensure that they are reducing redundancies and older, non-needed versions.  This gets to the crux of the distinction between best practices for records managers and best practices for digital asset managers (or digital archivists).  Ideally, a knowledgeable professional will collect and appraise these materials, and describe it in a way, so that a future plan can be created to ensure that these assets (or records) can be migrated forward into new formats accessible on emerging (or not-yet invented) media players and readers.

Ultimately, this leads to the most serious problem facing archivists: the metadata schemas that are most popular (DublinCore, IPTC, DACS, EAD, etc.) are not specific enough to help archivists plan for the future.  Until our metadata schemas can be updated to ensure that content, context, function, structure, brand, storage media and file formats can be specifically and granularly identified and notated, we will continue paddling frantically against the digital deluge with no workable strategy or plan, or awareness of potential problems (e.g. vendor lock-in, non-backwards compatible formats, etc.)  Sadly, in the face of huge quantities of materials (emails and pages), NARA will probably embrace MPLP, and ultimately hinder and hurt future access to the most important specific files, pages, emails, etc., because they will refuse to hire more professionals to do this work, and will (probably) rely on computer scientists and defense contractors to whitewash the problems and sell more software.

Most of you who are in the archives biz are probably already well aware of the now legendary rally call issued by Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner for archivists to acknowledge and take seriously the great threat that lurked in hundreds of cubic feet of unprocessed collections buried deep in our storage rooms (Here is a link to that article in case you are not). In short, Greene and Meissner recommend that archivists cease arranging and describing collections to the item or folder level (putting every item in some sort of order, describing every piece of paper, and removing every staple) and instead focus upon collection and series level arrangement and description. They argue that the dramatic increase in the amount of records archives are taking in necessitates the implementation of processing standards that will enable archivists to eliminate backlogs and provide researchers with at least some basic access to and information about the entirety of the collections we hold in our archives.

I was a graduate student primarily focused upon the academic side of history related professions when I was first introduced to the MPLP debate. Sitting in the seat of the researcher, I viewed it as an interesting but unnecessary attempt to justify shortcuts when processing collections. I have since been confronted with the reality of the challenges and threats presented by archival backlogs. I have come to the conclusion that it is often necessary to implement and adapt MPLP processing standards in order to eliminate backlogs and provide our patrons with the information and access they need to conduct productive research. I have not applied MPLP standards wholesale in the development of my institution’s processing policies. However, I do believe that it is necessary to utilize these standards whenever they are reasonably appropriate and in cases when implemented they can produce a usable, accessible finding aid for our research community in a timely manner.

This is not an issue that only concerns archivists. Archivists are, after all, in the business of providing access to the collections we faithfully preserve in our PH neutral (or buffered) containers. Thus, it is vitally important that researchers are made aware of the implications of the MPLP wave in archival processing so that they can know where and how to start the research process. So, what does this transition mean for…

Historians

My friends who write books, here’s what it means for you. Archivists are starting to take seriously our long held belief that it is not our job to undertake extensive research. Most archivists contend that it is their professional duty to provide you with a description of the records before you and enough contextual information about their creator to allow you to know where to start your research. That means you will start to see finding aids with collection level descriptions, series or box level descriptions, and box and/or folder lists. For better or worse, the item calender that provides detailed information about every item in a collection will likely become more of a rarity in the future. You may also find that the folders within series are not neatly ordered in chronological or subject order. Furthermore, you may have to literally get your hands a little dirty when examining records as archivists may not have replaced folders, taken out staples, or brushed the dust out from between the letters you are reading.

However, the application of MPLP processing standards will also mean that collections will be processed and available for research more expediently. In many cases, archives are focusing upon creating online accessible collection level descriptions for all of their collections before proceeding to more detailed processing for individual collections. As a result, you will be able to identify collections of interest and begin research in a more timely manner. It may simply take a little more time for you to dig through the collection to identify the specific material that you are trying to locate.

Curators

A lot of what I mentioned to historians will also be applicable to you when identifying manuscripts and audiovisual material for exhibits. However, you may face some unique issues when conducting research in MPLP finding aids. Most noticeably, you may not find audiovisual records neatly separated into different collections or series based upon their specific format. For example, I was recently trying to locate an image of Esther Edwards Burr for a research project. Because I was familiar with MPLP standards and was aware that Princeton was using MPLP processing techniques, I started by searching the Princeton presidential records of her husband Aaron Burr, Sr. I searched the finding aid and discovered that there was an image of Esther Edwards Burr in Series 2. The information I needed was still readily accessible, I just had to know where to begin looking.

Over the next few weeks I will be writing posts in which I hope to provide a more detailed assessment of MPLP standards and a helpful case study for archivists at small institutions on how to implement and adapt these standards for use in their archives. I hope you will benefit from this examination and join in on the conversation.

A recent post by Michele Combs on the EAD Listserv has me thinking again about the large colleciton of EAD records that I work with on a daily basis.

Michele’s question was a seemingly simple one:

what percentage of your collections (that have “finding aids”) are encoded in EAD?

This, then, raised the question of how exactly do we define a finding aid, and also implied questions about whether all instances of “finding aids” should be encoded in EAD (my answer would be YES, if only for the format).  But that’s not the part that interested me during the discussion.

What interested me was when someone else in the list mentioned that though they had a certain percentage of their finding aids in EAD, they also had some finding aids that were extremely long (up to 1000 pages!), and that almost none of the collections that went over 100 pages were in EAD format.  This makes some sense, as it would take a lot of time to type that information into digital format (if it only exists on paper), and the OCR process/clean-up might take even longer.  That said, eventually these collections will have to be converted to EAD:  certainly their current length already suggests the importance of the collection!

But the introduction of “page count” is what really interested me, and gave me some good ideas.  Here’s what I mean:

“Page counts” are not a very good unit of measurement, since the format, font type, font size, margins, spacing, etc., can all affect what length you’ll end up with.  However, any finding aid that’s in a digital format (be that EAD or even MS Word) can easily be measured by the unit of character count (sans the EAD tags in regards to the XML format, though, of course).   This way, archives/archivists can do a quick and accurate count of the size of ALL of their finding aids.

What’s more, this measurement would then be accurate when compared to collections at other institutions (which would certainly not be the case if it were just based on page counts).

Of course, it’s important to note that I’m only talking about the “size” of the finding aid, and not the physical size of the collection.  However, once you have the “descriptive” size of the finding aid, you could then compare that information with the physical extent of the collection.

But why would you want to do that?  Well, for one, it could be a useful tool to visualize not only the size of our collections, but the lengths that we go toward describing them (and, in a lot of cases, the lengths that we still need to go, in regards to collections that may be physically large but nearly bereft of descriptive attention).

So, I’m thinking about starting to develop a simple toolset to do just that on our local collection (assuming I ever have the time) in hopes that it could then be extended to other archival institutions that are also using EAD.  Hopefully such a large-scale assesment would have some unintended effects as well, but at the very least I think that it could be an interesting way to pinpoint collections — or even areas of collections — that are in need of more processing to increase their visibility (and this, I’m thinking, could be an ideal step to take after the wave of  “more product, less processing” approaches in order to help archivists prioritize their time).

Since I started my practicum, I’ve been very conscious of the time I’m spending on each task, trying to gauge what a typical professional might finish in a comparable amount of time.  Cataloging during my first week was very slow due in part to a fairly steep learning curve on some of the software, so it’s hard to judge how efficient I might be at that job if I had some more time to get used to the tools.  I think archival description is going a bit smoother, but I’m hanging now between two different modes of operation.  Part of me wants to get every last detail covered in processing this collection (including all the recommended preservation steps).  On the other hand, even a relatively small archive like CSU has a backlog of collections waiting to be processed, and spending too much time on one collection means another is that much further from seeing the light of day. (Not that I am responsible for such things, being an unpaid intern who’s here for only a few  weeks more, but I think it is useful to operate as if you have a stake in the outcomes).

One of the recent debates in the archival profession has centered around a 2005 paper by Greene & Meissner, entitled “More Product, Less Process” (aka MPLP), in which the authors call for less detailed and fastidious processing in order to save time and money, and to increase the number of publicly accessible collections.  On the other side of the argument are preservationists who feel that that cutting corners in processing will lead to problems down the road, as well as reference staff who feel that less detailed finding aids will lead to more time being spent helping users navigate a collection.  Some researchers also may have a problem with this approach, although, from what many sources state, they really don’t seem to care about finding aids, preservation or cleanliness, etc. — as long as they can see a list of what the collection contains and then find what they are looking for, they will be happy.  And isn’t that what it’s all about?

I highly recommend reading the original article:

More Product, Less Process [PDF]: http://www.midwestarchives.org/2006_Fall/readings/AA68.2.GreeneMeissner.pdf

…also, a few MPLP counterpoints:  http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=146

Thanks, Kif, for bringing this to my attention.

10am-4pm

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of “the new spokesman of the electronic age”, Marshall (Understanding Media) McLuhan, and digital archivists should take a moment to think about how media, digital and analog, hot and cool, and in many different formats change our jobs, lives and responsibilities. With threats of technological obsolescence, vendor lock-in, hardware failure, bit rot and link rot, non-backwards compatible software, and format and media obsolescence, digital archivists need a system to accurately describe digital objects and assets in their form and function, content, subject, object and context. If we miss key details, we run the risk of restricting access in the future because, for example, data may not be migrated or media refreshed as needed. By studying and understanding media, digital archivists can propose a realistic and trustworthy digital strategy and implement better and best practices to guarantee more efficiency from capture (and digitization or ingest) and appraisal (selection and description), to preservation (storage) and access (distribution).

Over the last ten, forty, one hundred and twenty thousand years, we have crossed many thresholds and lived through many profound media changes– from oral culture to hieroglyphic communications to the alphabet and the written word, and from scrolls to books, and most recently transiting from the Atomic Age (age of atoms) to the Information Age (era of bits). While all changes were not paradigm shifts, many helped shift currencies of trust and convenience to establish new brand loyalties built on threats of imminent obsolescence and vendor lock-in. As digital archivists, we stand at the line separating data from digital assets, so we need to ensure that we are archiving and preserving the assets and describing the content, technical and contextual metadata as needed.

Today, Day of Digital Archives, is a good day to consider Marshall McLuhan’s most famous aphorism, “The medium is the massage,” and update it for the Information Age. In a nutshell, McLuhan argues that “the medium is the message” because an electric light bulb (medium) is pure information (light). He goes on to state: “This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the “content” of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.” (Understanding Media, 23-24) But in the Information Age, the [digital] medium is [no longer] the [only] message. Every born-digital or digitized file is a piece in an environment in which it was created or is accessed, and needs to be described on multiple planes to articulate technical specifications (hardware & software versions, operating system, storage media, file format, encryption) as well as its content. For archivists and librarians describing content, the medium and the message, many use MARC, DublinCore and VRA Core are guides, but PBCore provides a richly defined set of technical, content and Intellectual Property metadata fields to ensure all stakeholders, including IT staff will be able to efficiently access, copy or use the asset (or a copy).

With More Product, Less Process [MPLP] the prevailing processing strategy, many libraries, archives and museums encourage simplified descriptions to catalog digital objects, but these generic descriptions (e.g. moving image, video or digital video) do not provide the most critical information to ensure future users can watch the video online, on an iPad or with a DVD player (or VHS player or film projector). Until digital objects and assets are described in their granular, multi-dimensional digital splendor, we are hurting ourselves and archival access in the future. Once we understand that the medium and message are split into many different categories, we can focus descriptive metadata on critical access points (subject, format or function), and we will not need to panic and makework every time a new [moving image] format [or codec] gains temporary popularity. With better description and critical appraisal at ingest, digital archivists will understand that the medium, the message and the content, subject, structure, form, format and other aspects are all integral parts. At that point we will start to change the commonly-held mindset that “The [digital] medium is [no longer] the [only] message.” 

This disconnect between archives and their future users led Bearman to write “I urged that we seek justification in use, and that we become indispensable to corporate functioning as the source of information pertaining to what the organization does, and as the locus of accountability.”  With his well-stated pithy aphorisms like “most potential users of archives don’t,” and that “those who do use archives are not the users we prefer,” he was able to point to the serious problem facing us today: past practices have led us to preserve the wrong stuff for our unprefered users!  Of course Information Technology has led us down this road since computer storage is marketed as so cheap (and always getting cheaper),  and it seems much easier to store everything than to let an archivist do his job starting with selection and appraisal, retention and preservation, arrangement and description, and access and use.

Ultimately, his essay is a clarion call for archivists to establish a clear goal for the profession, namely to accept their role in risk management and providing accountability for the greater societal goal.  The role of an archivist, in my opinion, is to serve as an institution’s conscience!  Perhaps that is the reason why library science and archival studies are considered science.   He suggests that strategic thinking is required “Because strategic thinking focuses on end results, it demands “outcome” oriented, rather than “output” oriented, success measures. For example, instead of measuring the number of cubic feet of accessions (an output of the accessioning process), we might measure the percentage of requests for records satisfied (which comes closer to reflecting the purpose of accessioning).”

This seminal essay is a fascinating read and groundbreaking analysis of the sorry state of appraisal.  “What we have actually been doing is scheduling records to assure that nothing valuable is thrown away, but this is not at all equivalent to assuring that everything valuable is kept.  Instead, these methods reduce the overall quantity of documentation; presumably we have felt that if the chaff was separated from the wheat it would be easier to identify what was truly important.  The effect, however, is to direct most records management and archival energy into
controlling the destruction of the 99 percent of records which are of only temporary value, rather than into identifying the 1 percent we want, and making efforts to secure them.”

Using incendiary language, Bearman goes on to state the obvious:  “Appraisal, which is the method we have
employed to select or identify records, is bankrupt.  Not only is it hopeless to try to sort out the cascade of “values” that can be found in records and to develop a formula by which these are applied to records, 16 it wastes resources and rarely even encounters the evidence of those business functions which we most want to document.”

2D lifecycle or 3D continuum

This is a revolutionary essay, and I strongly encourage every archivist to read it and think about it deeply.  The ideas have mostly languished and been ignored in this country as we continue to use the life cycle model, but Bearman’s ideas are written in the international standards for records management (ISO 15489) and  widely embraced in Australia (and China) where, over the last two decades, they have conceptualized and implemented the “Australian records continuum” model to great effect and, in doing so, they are looking at born-digital assets and electronic records from perspectives of all users, functions, and needs.  In my opinion, it seems like the continuum model is a 3D version of the lifecycle, which reminds me of this image from A Wrinkle in Time in which Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit explain time travel to Meg and Charles Wallace by showing how an ant can quickly move across a string if the two ends are brought closer together.   In other words, if archivists look at the desired end result, they can appraise and process accordingly.

After reading the Bearman essay for the first time and seeing how it has caused such dramatic changes in archival conceptualizations, methods, strategies and processes elsewhere, but is still not taught in any depth in US library or archival studies schools, I spoke with other nydawg members, and we decided to use it as the text as for our next discussion group on Tuesday August 23.   I hope to revisit this topic later.

One last point.  Because of the deluge of materials accessioned by archives, “uncataloged backlog among manuscripts collections was a mean of nearly one-third repository holdings”, leading the authors to claim “Cataloging is  function that is not working.”  With budgets cut and small staffs unable to make progress, Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner wrote another revolutionary piece titled “More Product, Less Process: Pragmatically Revamping Traditional Processing Approaches to Deal with Late 20th-Century Collections” [MPLP] which was a plea for minimal processing.

Unlike Bearman’s “Archival Strategies”, MPLP leads archivists to believe that we must remain passive filers or describers or catalogers or undertakers.  But without a better understanding of appraisal and how to do it, we are doomed with analog, paper, born-digital or electronic records!  The clearest example of this is the National Archives and Records Administration’s Electronic Records Archive (ERA) which, according to Archivist of the United States David Ferriero “At the moment, most of the electronic records in ERA are Presidential records from the George W. Bush White House.  This important collection includes more than 200 million e-mail messages and more than 3 million digital photographs, as well as more than 30 million additional electronic records in other formats. “

A few weeks ago, I actually crunched the numbers and figured out that 200 million emails over the course of eight years works out to nearly one email a second!  (365 days a year x 8 years = 2920 days plus 2 (leap year days)  2922 x 24 hours a day = 70,128 hours x 60 mins in an hour = 4,207,680 x 60 seconds per minute = 252,460,800. )
After doing the math, my first thought was, “if we’re trying to process and preserve every email sent every second by the George W. Bush Administration, we must be doing something wrong.”  And now, I think I understand the problem: we’re not doing effective appraisal.  Although we still have to wait for public access to the emails, I am fairly confident that researchers will find that nearly 90 percent of the collection are duplicates, or that they are keeping copies of the sent email, the different received emails, plus backups of all of them.  With better appraisal, this task should not be so difficult, and would leave more time for catalogers to do more detailed descriptions (which will be more important later, especially with different formats of “moving images” which are not compatible  with newer versions of hardware (e.g. iPads don’t play Flash Video).