The records life cycle - smith-special-collections/sc-documentation GitHub Wiki

Archival material has a whole life cycle before it comes to us for accessioning and processing. This is a brief summary the process:

  1. Material comes to Special Collections in multiple ways. Most collections are donated to us by individuals and organizations and we purchase some materials, many for the Mortimer Rare Book Collection. For donations, ideally collection stewards discuss with a donor what it would mean to give their materials to an archive. They discuss how the donor came to have the materials, what kinds of materials they have, what we will do with the materials, and what we are not willing to take.
  2. Donors sign a legal agreement, a deed of gift, setting down in writing that they are giving the material to us and what conditions we need to meet. They also specify what they want to happen to the copyright and access to the material. They can restrict any part of the collection from researchers, but typically we do not take materials that will be closed forever. For purchased materials, invoices serve as the legal record of the transfer of ownership to Special Collections.
  3. Once the materials arrive at Smith College, they go to the Accessioning Archivist, who creates a record of what we received, stabilizes the materials, and makes sure that there is nothing hazardous in the collection, especially mold or bugs. The Accessioning Archivist creates an inventory of the materials and an initial finding aid. Sometimes the description will be broad and other times the collection will be divided into numerous series with more comprehensive descriptions. At Smith College Special Collections, we make materials available once they have been accessioned.
  4. Occasionally, a collection comes to us in disorder and researchers have trouble using the collection. Some collections have material that needs to be restricted from public viewing mixed in throughout the collection material, meaning researchers can't even view open portions of the collection. In these cases, the collection is added to our list of collections to process fully.
  5. The Collections Archivist is responsible for processing collections that have been identified as needing more work than accessioning to allow for access for researchers. This could mean writing a more detailed description, removing or setting apart restricted materials, weeding out low value or unrelated papers, rearranging files to make a new structure, creating new labels and titles that better describe materials.
  6. After processing, materials can be used by researchers again. If more materials are added to the collection or we decide that the collection needs more work for some other reason, it can be reprocessed in future.

The records life cycle

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