Collection Analysis

The first step in processing is conducting a thorough collection analysis. The analysis is the foundation for all decisions about levels of arrangement and description and enables the imposition of both physical and intellectual control onto a collection.

  • Intellectual control: The creation of tools such as catalogs, finding aids, or other guides that enable users to locate materials relevant to their interests.
  • Physical control: The function of tracking the storage of records to ensure that they can be located. [1]

2.1 Determine Provenance and Original Order

  • Provenance: 1. The origin or source of something. - 2. Information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection.
  • Original order: The organization and sequence of records established by the creator (and possibly users) of the records.

Provenance is a fundamental principle in archival practice that dictates that the records or papers created by one entity not be intermingled with the papers or records created by another entity. Retaining collections as distinct entities according to provenance preserves important contextual information necessary for understanding the material. The creation, use, and storage of a collection may all affect the meaning and interpretation of the records. Provenance often refers to the creator of the material, but can also refer to agents who collected or otherwise accumulated, received, or housed the material.

Curatorial staff should provide the archivist with as much provenance information as they can. For especially large and important collections, curators will write a collection prospectus (“one-pager”) prior to acquisition describing the history and research value of the material. This document, when available, will be uploaded with other acquisition paperwork to Box. The Rose Library may receive collections directly from the creator or a close family member or from rare book and manuscript dealers. It is rare for dealers to include provenance information with material they sell. However, when it is available to them, they will include it in the dealer description that also describes the contents of the material.

Identifying and preserving original order maintains the relationships and evidential significance of material within the context of the collection. Preserving original order also allows archivists to work more efficiently while providing meaningful access to patrons. Original order does not necessarily equate to the order in which the material is received. In the case of personal papers, original order may be difficult to recognize or have been disrupted beyond intelligibility throughout its custodial history. In cases where the context of creation and use cannot be easily preserved, archivists will need to determine whether the collection and its users are best served by maintaining the existing disorder or by imposing an arrangement scheme on the collection. Significant time and effort should not be spent recreating original order when it’s not apparent. Carefully document your decision-making process, as it will form the basis of the processing note [LINK].

2.2 Condition Assessment/Physical Inventory

Assess the current physical condition of the collection (this will actually be done concurrently with determining original order). Begin by briefly examining the contents of each box. Make sure there is enough space to open boxes and look through folders, paying particular attention to the activities the papers document, topics that they cover, and how they are currently organized. Note the current arrangement; are the papers arranged alphabetically, chronologically, or topically? This existing arrangement– the original order of the collection– will guide your final arrangement decisions. At this point, the existing order (or apparent disorder) should not be altered.

Keep track of the materials found in the boxes and make a rough outline of the contents of each box paying particular attention to and making note of the types of materials found there (e.g. correspondence, minutes, financial records), general dates of the materials in each box, formats of the materials, and any preservation issues like odd smells, mold, signs of insect or rodent infestation, water damage, or extremely fragile material. Refer to the Preservation During Processing section for additional information.

2.3 Determine Level of Arrangement and Description

Start by analyzing the records (their content and context) at a high level. What does the collection as a whole tell us? What are the major pieces of the collection and how do they relate to each other? Why does that matter? How can we best expose all of this to researchers? Archivists are trained to understand the ways that records are created and to assess their potential value as evidence, information, and/or as symbols. This requires having a thorough understanding of the collection as a whole before assigning levels of arrangement and description. Archival processing should be a top down endeavor-it should start with analyzing the overall context of a collection to understand what it documents and how it does so and then aggregating groupings of content within the collection. Processing work should always proceed from the general to the specific.

Once you have done a broad analysis of the collection determine the level(s) of arrangement and description necessary to provide meaningful access to the records. You will want to consult with the Head of Collection Services and the appropriate curator to make sure you know what the repository’s goals are for the collection, so that you can determine what level of arrangement and description will most effectively and efficiently meet those goals. In general, you are looking for the “golden minimum,” the least granular level of arrangement and description that will meet the stated access and use goals for the collection. [LINK]

2.3.1 Identifying intellectual units within collections:

Archivists will always describe records, at minimum, at the collection level, but most large or more complex collections will have additional groupings of material. These groupings (which could be series and/or subseries) may correlate to the functional areas of a person’s life or an organization’s business activity; be format based; or document particular subjects, interests, or relationships. In institutional or administrative records, these units will correspond to administrative offices and/or business purposes. In personal papers, units are more likely to correspond to different elements of an individual’s personal and professional activity. Intellectual units may also be based on documentary format, such as photographs or born digital material. When components are organized by format it is generally for preservation purposes, to enhance access to material whose format is inherently valuable in itself, or because the creator maintained them separately. In large collections, components may be sub-categorized to reflect further intellectual divisions of material.

When physically sorting/arranging material, move carefully through the collection from broadest to most granular. Beginning with the collection as it was received (or arranged during accessioning), physically aggregate materials into broad categories based on the function of the records, the sphere of activity that they document or, potentially, their format. This will be informed by the original order or original use of the records and will likely become your series.

During the first sort, do not remove materials from their original enclosures or discard anything; the focus here is on identifying and understanding groups of files, not on individual documents or even individual files within a grouping. If additional sorting is required for a researcher to make sense of a collection, it will happen on a second or third pass through the records as you refine your arrangement and description based on a better understanding of the material and its creation and use. These subsequent levels of sorting and arranging will vary from collection to collection. Processing often entails regular refinement of categories and groupings as your understanding of a collection increases.

Because archival description is hierarchical, each level of description inherits the characteristics of its parent component. Therefore, if something is true of a series, it must be true of all things in the series, whether a subseries 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.

Footnotes

[1]All definitions in this document taken from: Society of American Archivists, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology, 2005. https://www2.archivists.org/glossary, accessed August 7, 2017.