More Product, Less Process:

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More Product, Less Process
Mark A. Greene, American Heritage Center Dennis
Meissner, Minnesota Historical Society
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Mark Greene

• Director, American Heritage Center, University of
  Wyoming

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Why did we work on this?

• My experience at four repositories with
  significant backlogs of unprocessed materials
  Carleton College, Minnesota Historical Society,
  Henry Ford Museum, AHC
• Dennis experience as processing manager at MHS

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The Problem

• Archival processing does not keep pace with the
  growth of collections

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The Problem

• Archival processing does not keep pace with the
  growth of collections
• Unprocessed backlogs continue to grow

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The Problem

• Archival processing does not keep pace with the
  growth of collections
• Unprocessed backlogs continue to grow
• Researchers denied access to collections

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The Problem

• Archival processing does not keep pace with the
  growth of collections
• Unprocessed backlogs continue to grow
• Researchers denied access to collections
• Our image with donors and resource allocators
  suffers

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Findings

• Processing benchmarks and practices are
  inappropriate to deal with problems posed by
  large contemporary collections

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Findings

• Processing benchmarks and practices are
  inappropriate to deal with problems posed by
  large contemporary collections
• Ideal vs. necessary

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Findings

• Processing benchmarks and practices are
  inappropriate to deal with problems posed by
  large contemporary collections
• Ideal vs. necessary
• Fixation on item level tasks

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Findings

• Processing benchmarks and practices are
  inappropriate to deal with problems posed by
  large contemporary collections
• Ideal vs. necessary
• Fixation on item level tasks
• Preservation anxieties trump user needs

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Findings

• Arrangement
• Practice Still often at the item level

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Findings

• Arrangement
• Practice Still often at the item level
• Warrant Literature mixed, but much advises
  against item level work

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Findings

• Description
• Practice
• Weak commitment to online access
• Little focus on item level

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Findings

• Description
• Practice
• Weak commitment to online access
• Little focus on item level
• Warrant
• Describe all holdings, in general, before
  describing some in detail
• Descriptive level follows arrangement level
• Level varies from collection to collection

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Findings

• Conservation
• Practice Strong commitment to item level work

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Findings

• Conservation
• Practice Strong commitment to item level work
• Warrant Item-focused conservation prescriptions
  often contradict advice on arrangement and
  description

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Findings

• Metrics
• Literature Range of 4-40 hours per cubic foot

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Findings

• Metrics
• Literature Range of 4-40 hours per cubic foot
• However, a convincing body of experience
  coalesces at the high-productivity end
• Maher, 1982 (3.4 hours per cubic foot)
• Haller, 1987 (3.8 hours per cubic foot)
• Northeastern University Processing Manual (4-10
  hours per cubic foot)

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Findings

• Metrics
• Literature Range of 4 - 40 hours per cubic foot
• Grant Project Survey 0.6 67 hours per cubic
  foot (Mode 33 hours Mean 9 hours)

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Findings

• Metrics
• Literature Range of 4 - 40 hours per cubic foot
• Grant Project Survey 0.6 67 hours per cubic
  foot (Mode 33 Mean 9)
• Survey of Archivists 2 250 hours per cubic
  foot (Mode 8 Mean 14.8)

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Recommendations

• General Principles for Change

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Recommendations

• General Principles for Change
• Establish acceptable minimum level of work, and
  make it the processing benchmark

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Recommendations

• General Principles for Change
• Establish acceptable minimum level of work, and
  make it the benchmark
• Dont assume all collections, or all collection
  components, will be processed to same level

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Recommendations

• Arrangement
• Description
• Conservation
• Productivity

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Recommendations

• Arrangement
• In normal or typical situations, the physical
  arrangement of materials in archival groups and
  manuscript collections should not take place
  below the series level

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Recommendations

• Arrangement
• In normal or typical situations, the physical
  arrangement of materials in archival groups and
  manuscript collections should not take place
  below the series level
• Not all series and all files in a collection need
  to be arranged to the same level

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Recommendations

• Description
• Since description represents arrangement
  describe materials at a level of detail
  appropriate to that level of arrangement.

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Recommendations

• Description
• Since description represents arrangement
  describe materials at a level of detail
  appropriate to that level of arrangement
• Keep description brief and simple

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Recommendations

• Description
• Since description represents arrangement
  describe materials at a level of detail
  appropriate to that level of arrangement
• Keep description brief and simple
• Level of description should vary across
  collections, and across components within a
  collection

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Recommendations

• Conservation
• Rely on storage area environmental controls to
  carry the conservation burden

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Recommendations

• Conservation
• Rely on storage area environmental controls to
  carry the conservation burden
• Avoid wholesale refoldering
• Avoid removing and replacing metal fasteners
• Avoid photocopying items on poor paper

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Recommendations

• Conservation
• Rely on storage area environmental controls to
  carry the conservation burden
• Dont perform conservation tasks at a lower
  hierarchical level than you perform arrangement
  and description

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Recommendations

• Productivity
• A processing archivist ought to be able to
  arrange and describe large twentieth century
  archival materials at an average rate of four
  hours per cubic foot

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The goal of all this

• is to make our patrons, donors, administrators,
  and funders happy, proving that repositories can
  use the resources they have to the best advantage
  and with the greatest efficiency.

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Questions