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. Collection stewards discuss with a donor what it would mean to give their materials to an archive. We ask them how they came to have the materials, what kind of materials they have, their expectations for how we handle the materials, and what we are not willing to take.
  2. The donor signs 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.
  3. The materials go to the accessioning archivist, so that we can create a record of what we received and make sure that we catch any problems 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. After accessioning collections are open to researchers (with the exception of restricted materials)!
  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.
  5. Archivists process the collection in a way that allows for greater use and access for researchers. This could mean giving the collection a really thorough finding aid, 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, and/or dividing or combining collections.
  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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