Project Manager
...now browsing by category
Working for Victory: the Alma A. Clarke papers
Monday, March 1st, 2010
End of Year Report: 2009
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010PACSCL/CLIR “Hidden Collections” Project
July to December 2009
Well, the first six months of the “Hidden Collections” Project have come and gone and it has been a whirlwind! The entire project team was assembled, manuals and standards were created, student processors were trained, 18 collections were processed at the rate of 2.84 hours per linear foot, and we learned that minimal processing works for almost all collections, not just late 20th century institutional records!
The project team consists of Project Archivist, Courtney Smerz; Student Processors Leslie O’Neill, Laurie Rizzo, Eric Rosenzweig and Forrest Wright; and me, the Project Manager. We worked with a wide variety of collections which span the 18th to 20th centuries and cover, at the broadest level, the topics of Quakerism, colleges and universities, and medicine. These collections include institutional, family, and personal papers.
As proposed in More Product, Less Process by Greene and Meissner, institutional records do work best. On average, these collections, largely at Drexel University, were processed at an average of 2.18 hours per linear foot. Personal papers, at Drexel University College of Medicine and Haverford College, were the next easiest, and these were processed at an average of 2.25 hours per linear foot. Family papers are, by far, the hardest, taking significantly more time per collection. Our average for processing family records is 4 hours per linear foot (which is still in the minimal processing range, as suggested by MPLP). The issues that make family papers difficult, to name just a few, are the number of family members contributing to the collection, the time span of the collection which often crosses several generations, and the fact that a good deal of the correspondence is not actually addressed or signed with a person’s name. Quite frequently, letters are sent to “Dear son,” or signed “Your loving mother.” When working with one person’s records, this is not quite as daunting as when you have 4 or 5 potentials for the “mother” and an endless number of possible “sons.” The 19th and 20th century Quakers, the main source of our family collections in this first semester, have a few truly delightful quirks which made processing their collections just a tiny bit trickier. For example, they consistently name their children after relatives … so it is entirely possible to have several Jane Rhoads in one collection. Moreover, in these collections, once they married, in-laws became “mother,” “father,” “sister,” and “brother,” making even the most general identification of senders and recipients virtually impossible in the minimal processing world.
We also discovered that there are some downsides to minimal processing, particularly in the description of collections. Moving through a collection at the rate this project demands means that absorbing content is really difficult. For the first semester, I created processing plans (Courtney is taking over for the rest of the project) for the collections on our list and wrote biographical/historical notes. I think minimal processing at 2 hours per linear foot without the processing plans and rough notes would be absolutely impossible–sometimes the physical processing cannot be done in that time frame.
At this point in the project, I am not sure that I would recommend minimal processing at 2 hours per linear foot–it is just too fast. 4 hours per linear foot, I think, would be a completely different story. Minimal processing, of which I am a fan, really does work and more importantly, it makes the collection available to the researchers long before it could be if we demanded full processing. Although I have not had the luxury of trying minimal processing at 4 hours per linear foot, I am convinced those additional two hours would result in more content and more thorough and accurate biography/history notes and scope and contents notes. My biggest fear with our notes is that we don’t know enough to let the researchers know that the collection contains the material they are seeking. Time will tell once researcher discover these previously hidden, and now “unhidden” collections!
Following, a list of collections processed, the project timeline from June to December, and looking forward:
Collections Processed
18 Collections
255.5 linear feet at an average of 2.84 hours per linear foot
Drexel University
Drexel University College of Medicine
Haverford College
Looking forward:
The family paper saga continues: Reinhardt, Hawley and Hewes at Haverford
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
As stated before, if you will read other blog posts here, you will find that “quick” is not a term we have often used when describing the processing of family papers–and generally speaking, I don’t necessarily think that family papers are good candidates for minimal processing at this speed. Quite frequently, the physical arrangement of collection cannot even be completed in the two hours per linear foot. That said, processors not constrained to two hours per linear foot could probably use minimal processing on family papers and get really good results. In two hours, the collections look pretty good and are organized and usable. An archivist used to perfect processing might faint in horror at the letters still in envelopes, a lack of chronological order within folders, etc., but the bottom line is that the collection is available. As stated in a few earlier blog posts, what suffers in minimal processing, in my opinion, is the description of the collections: the bio/history notes and the scope and contents notes.
This processing of this collection produced yet another interesting insight into minimal processing. It seems that the better a collection is arranged prior to our processing, the less content we discover. I suppose that it makes sense–I did not have to read anything to discover where it should go in the intellectual or physical arrangement of the collection. That work was done by the donor and workers at Haverford who had already removed letters from envelopes. The saving grace for me in this instance, however, is that Ann P. McCormack’s book, The Reinhardts and Hawleys of Chester County, PA: Lives and Letters, Also Including Related Families of Meredith, Mendenhall, Pugh, etc. and the Hewes of Salem County, NJ, is available at the Haverford College Special Collections. Many of the documents in the collection are transcribed in the book, which made writing a bio note possible and will make any initial researching of the collection a lot easier.
The Rhoads family papers: An archivist’s dream or nightmare?
Friday, October 30th, 2009
To be completely honest from the start, I did not process this collection in 2 hours per linear foot. Just discovering the family members contributing to the collection and determining a rough understanding of what was in the collection was daunting, not to mention time consuming. The biggest disappointment for me is that the content of the collection has not been revealed to any great extent … at least to the extent that the collection deserves.
So, does that really matter if we have made the collection AVAILABLE for researchers who will then discover the content and hopefully share it with a wider audience? As a lover of history, I wish that we could provide tons of content information on all the collections, primarily because I want to know all about the history. However, on a more rational level, I know that the researchers of these papers almost always know more about the historical significance and relevance of materials than some archivists and certainly more than project staff who can hardly be experts on a majority of the diverse set of topics included in the collections of this project.
In the end, this collection was processed at 5.5 hours per linear foot–still less than standard processing (usually 8 hours per linear foot). I am not sure I could have processed the collection any faster and I know that I could not have processed it in 5.5 hours per linear foot without the survey records and the processing plan.
I suppose in the end the really big question is: Is this collection a minimal processing success? I say, YES! It is available: now that researchers have access to the collection, we can begin to document its use and perhaps justify further processing. Moreover, a researcher looking for a Quaker family papers collection may find just what they are looking for in this previously “hidden collection.” You never know …
BOOT CAMP!
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
In training, we covered an overview of the project, basic processing theory, minimal processing theory, pre-20th century paleography, biographical and historical notes, scope and content notes and abstracts, the Archivists’ Toolkit, and hands-on processing. This seemed like a lot to accomplish in a three day period.
We planned for two days in the electronic classroom and one day for hands-on processing, but we quickly found that the two days in the electronic classroom was too much. So, on Tuesday evening, I placed a call to the remarkably flexible Drexel University crew and asked if we could start hands-on processing Wednesday afternoon instead of Thursday morning. Already, we learned that the hands-on work is where the real learning happens—across the board: photographs, writing notes, deciphering handwriting, and the Archivists’ Toolkit. ESPECIALLY the Archivists’ Toolkit! Because we finished the other training earlier than I anticipated, I attempted an explanation of the Archivists’ Toolkit without examples, and it was a dismal failure. The next day, however, our processors entered faux container lists into the Archivists’ Toolkit and every topic I had tried to explain the day before was made obvious.
The same thing happened with hands-on processing at Drexel’s off-site storage facility. The environment is terrific for group processing: a huge table on which to spread out a collection, chairs all around, and not a soul to disturb with conversation about the best way to process. With Drexel University College of Medicine’s George Hay collection before them, our student processors started asking all the right questions and, with a little guidance, answered them. The collection was not processed at the rate of two hours per linear foot, but we talked about issues and made certain that our processors are prepared for working next week!
The “Hidden Collections” Project has processed its first collection! A sincere thank you to Drexel University’s wonderful staff, Rob Sieczkiewicz of Drexel University Archives and Margaret Graham and Lisa Grimm of Drexel University College of Medicine, for helping to make our first hands-on training session possible and successful!
Anny Elston–the Test Collection
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009I wrote manuals, I am writing manuals, I will be writing manuals! Last week, it suddenly became obvious to me that I needed to try out the manuals before continuing with my work. The Drexel University College of Medicine folk kindly offered the Anny Elston papers, a collection created by Anny Elston, a New York City doctor during the mid 20th century.
Not only was I excited to try out the manuals and discover their workability, I was also excited to get my hands on some papers. I strongly believe that archivists go into withdrawal if they do not get to breathe in a little dust and carefully maneuver through a folder of often brittle papers–at least I do!
So, I got busy–the collection is two linear feet and it appeared that someone had worked on it at some point. I began the actual processing, with a timer in hand, and applied all the minimal processing strategies laid out in the project’s manual which was largely guided by the work of Matthew Lyons and Cary Majewicz of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. And … minimal processing worked! The collection was physically processed and the container list was entered into the Archivists’ Toolkit in three hours and fifteen minutes. “Excellent,” I thought, “now I have forty-five minutes to write the bio and scope and content notes … plenty of time!” Okay, maybe not. Despite the fact that the collection contained a fair amount of biographical information (some of which was in German), it took me closer to two and a half hours to create these two notes.
While this was disappointing, I learned a lot–physically processing a collection in 2 hours per linear foot MAY be possible, and probably, quite frequently, IS possible. What does not seem possible is physically processing AND writing thorough descriptive notes in that time frame. With the number of linear feet to be processed (approximately 4600 linear feet) and the number of student processor hours allotted in the grant (8865 hours), it is going to be virtually impossible to do the project, even without adding a couple of extra hours per collections for description.
Thus, I decided that the project archivist and I would have to create really helpful processing plans and write up a rough bio. Then the students could quickly gain an idea of who or what the collection was about and what was in the collection. The students could begin physically processing the collection fairly quickly and therefore, take full advantage of the two hours per linear foot allotted to each collection. Their experience with the collection, combined with the supplied bio note and processing plan, could then be applied to enhancing the bio note and writing the scope and contents note–hopefully requiring significantly less time than it took me to write from scratch.
The Scheduling Begins
Monday, August 10th, 2009About a week ago, I sent an email to all participating repositories regarding scheduling preferences for processing–a tricky request since I am essentially asking people to make decisions as much as two years in advance. Despite that, the answers are trickling in, and I am, slowly but surely, filling the schedule.
Scheduling at this early stage has distinct advantages for me: I can determine how many student workers I need to hire based on the number of institutions citing a particular semester as most convenient and I can try to make certain that every institution has a fair and appropriate amount of time penciled in. The overall schedule also provides hard deadlines for the project team to strive for and achieve. With the ambitious goals of this project and the time constraints of 27 months, falling behind on our deadlines at one repository could prove disastrous. Finally, after processing the first semester, I will be able to reevaluate the overall schedule and determine if the original plan is achievable.
I believe that it is also advantageous for the institutions to schedule early. If supplies will be necessary for processing, the institution has a bit of time to adjust future budgets. Further, the grant for this project requires that each institution will contribute 10% staff time to the project. As we all know, most staff at libraries, archives and museums could use approximately 110% extra time to achieve all that they would like, so scheduling that 10% will be difficult.
Happily, two institutions have been scheduled for the first semester–thank you Drexel University and Haverford College for volunteering! Both institutions already have instances of the Archivists’ Toolkit installed which allows the project team a little more time in determining the best ways to install the program at roughly 20 Philadelphia area repositories, each with unique information technology set-ups.
The Wagner Free Institute for Science is scheduled for Spring 2010 and both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Library Company of Philadelphia are scheduled for Fall 2010. The University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library has agreed to be among the first repositories for which EAD conversion of existing finding aids will be performed.
Updates will be provided as I schedule more repositories!
The First Three Weeks
Friday, July 31st, 2009
Manuals, manuals and more manuals!
My job as project manager of the PACSCL/CLIR “Hidden Collections in the Philadelphia Area: A Consortial Processing Cataloging Initiative” Project began on July 8. On that day, I immersed myself in trying to figure out how to achieve the goals of this ambitious and amazing project which calls for minimally processing approximately 138 collections containing materials ranging from the 15th to the 21st centuries and converting approximately 80 non standard finding aids into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) during a two year time frame. On top of that, this project is implementing the Archivists’ Toolkit and coordinating 24 repositories’ EAD finding aids. On the up side, there was an enormous quantity of work done on this project before I even arrived. This project follows the PACSCL Survey Initiative Project which assessed unprocessed collections at 22 participating collections. In addition to assigning research value to collections (which was used in identifying candidate collections for the processing project), the surveyors created basic collection level records for every collection in this project.
There is still a lot to do! I am creating a minimal processing manual, the Archivists’ Toolkit guide, a training manual for our processing force (graduate and undergraduate students) and evaluation forms for students and for repositories in order to improve workflow. Ultimately, this project is intended as an experiment: to understand how minimal processing works, how the Archivists’ Toolkit can be implemented to create a union catalog, and how consortial efforts might bring about extraordinary results in making primary source resources available to researchers. Further, if we succeed (and I intend to succeed), this experimental effort may be used as a model for other institutions struggling to reduce their backlog and make their collections known to the public.
As the project continues, this space will be used for processor notes, project archivist notes and my more general comments about the status of the project, the problems we encounter, the solutions we discover and the successes that we achieve.