Archival Keys

#4: Arrangement and description - strategies processing collections
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
              archives@fortlewis.edu            © Todd Ellison, 2006
 
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Definition Examples How-To's Resources Application Feedback

 

DEFINITIONS
Establishing intellectual controls at the repository is a simultaneous 4-aspect process of:

a.  analysis

b.  selection

c.  arrangement, and

d.  description

For the purposes of this lesson, we'll focus just on the last two.  See if you can get a clear understanding of arrangement and description, and the distinction between these two archival terms.

Thus, when archives use the word arrangement they are referring to the scheme by which groups of items and collections are ordered to reveal their content and significance.  Now for the related term, description:

 
(*Credits: Fort Lewis College has SAA's permission to insert web page snapshots (like the one above) into these Archival Keys for training student workers, interns and volunteers, so long as the SAA url is pictured.  9/6/2006)

At this point, go to http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=2765 on the Internet and read Richard Pearce-Moses' description of archival description.

 

EXAMPLES OF THIS KEY AT WORK
A.  Look at the application of          in collections at the Center of Southwest Studies:

(


 

PRACTICAL HOW-TO’S
An archival rule of thumb is to leave materials in their original order (it it's a sensible order -- as we discussed in Archival Key #3) and let your description lead you into the material according to the organizational structure of the institution.
Think of the researcher, who is generally using Zipf's Law of Least Effort.  Someone has described that law as follows:

"...most researchers suffer from (or perhaps enjoy) an astonishing degree of inertia.  This is not quite the same thing as saying that short-term rewards are preferred to long-term rewards.  It is more like Zipf's law of least effort.  It has been shown that, given a choice of going next door with a small probability of obtaining relevant information, or indeed much information at all, and walking a hundred yards with a much higher probability of success and quantity, people go next door."  (Source: M. B. Line, On the Design of Information Systems for Human Beings.  Aslib Proc. 22: 329, July 1970, quoted in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 59 (2) April 1971, page 303.)

This is no doubt why search engines like Google have become so popular.  They make research so easy -- one-stop searching, right at your fingertips!  And that is why archives like the Center of Southwest Studies expend so much of their staff resources to placing descriptions of their collections on the Internet.

 

Resources

Books in the Professional Section of the Delaney Library:

  • Hunter, Gregory S., Developing and maintaining practical archives: a how-to-do-it manual (New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2nd edition, 2003).  Call number: CD950 .H86 2003  (2 copies at the Delaney Library; one is available for checkout)

  • Roe, Kathleen, Guidelines for arrangement and description of archives and manuscripts : a manual for historical records programs in New York State (Albany, N.Y. : University of the State of New York, the State Education Dept., New York State Archives and Records Administration, 1991).  Call number: Z695.2 .R64 1991

  • Miller, Fredric, Arranging and describing archives and manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1990).  Call number: Z695.2 .M55 1990 

  • Society of American Archivists, Describing archives: a content standard  [DACS] (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2004).  Call number: Z695.2 .S625 2004   

To do in DACS:

  • Read about the importance of provenance and original order, on pages xii-xiii.

To do in Hunter:

  • Read his overview of the basic principles of provenance and original order, on pages 113-115.

To do in Roe:

  1. Read her explanation of the principles of provenance and original order, on pages 9-10. 

  2. While you're in this book, read page 23 to review folder labeling.

To do in Miller:

  1. Read his description of the concepts of provenance and original order, on pages 25-27.

  2. Read his explanation of how to arrange records by provenance, on pages 71 (bottom)-72.

 

your practical application


Report to me on the questions in the online inventory examples (item B.2.).  (Items for you to respond to are in italics and/or bold font.)

Summative question: Having read these various authors, what

 

feedback (please send me an email -- including your responses to the two assignments in the previous section )

What was most helpful about this exercise?

What was unclear?

How could this Key be improved?