Cleveland History Blog

Must-read for archivists

Just in case you having come across this seminal 2005 article on project priorities for processing historic collections, I thought I'd share it. This is something everyone working in archives, special collections and historical societies should be conversant with.

Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, "More Product, Less Process: Pragmatically Revamping Traditional Processing Approaches to Deal with Late Twentieth Century Collections." (2005)

Their point is that if we insist on processing 20th century corporate records with the same exacting standards as we would say Washington's correspondence with Lafayette, we'll never get the job done, even with foundation support. We must not apply item-level processing expectations to these larger collections and instead process them at least at the collection or series levels to facilitate patron access and use. But they say it better, so read the whole article.

Labels: archives, Greene, historical collections, Meissner, processing

posted by Bill Barrow @ 2:31:00 PM