Doing it Yourself Almost: The Dreaded Move

1
Before
After
Doing it Yourself (Almost) The Dreaded
Move Jennifer Wright, Tammy Peters, and Ginger
Yowell Society of American Archivists, August 2009
Minimal Processing
Between 2006 and 2009, the Smithsonian
Institution Archives moved approximately 26,000
cubic feet of permanent and temporary records
(about 70 of its total collections) from three
existing facilities into two new facilities and
commercial storage. During this process, the
Archives was chiefly concerned with two issues
1) materials were housed in such a way that they
can safely be transported by movers and 2)
materials being sent to commercial storage are
described at a level that allows staff and
researchers to identify individual boxes for
retrieval. Since funding was only appropriated
for the facilities and the physical move of the
records from one facility to another, the
Archives had to leverage its existing resources
for move planning and collections preparation.
The supervisory archivist and the four-person
Archives and Information Management (AIM) Team
spearheaded the effort, spending 60-80 of their
time preparing for the moves however,
instructions for minimal processing and
description were developed so that interns,
archivists from other teams, other professional
staff, and even administrative staff could
contribute to the project by working on carefully
selected collections as time allowed. The charts
below highlight three aspects of the move.
Collections to Commercial Storage demonstrates
the steps taken to prepare each collection,
physically and intellectually, to be transported
to an Iron Mountain storage facility in Boyers,
PA. Oversized Materials focuses on the unique
preparations required for maps, blueprints, and
other items found in map cases, some of which had
lost their identifying information during a
previous move, as well as the actual
transportation of these materials. Collections
to Smithsonian Storage encompasses procedures
followed for both the move of permanent
collections to new on-site storage as well as the
move of the Records Center, and emphasizes space
planning and logistics.
Outcomes 3.5 years spent planning and preparing
for moves, including 8471.83 hours (the
equivalent of 211 work weeks) minimally
processing collections 10,093.43 cubic feet of
permanent records received physical interventions
such as acid-free boxes, acid-free folders,
spacers, sleeves, or reorientation 50.4 minutes
was the average time spent minimally processing
and creating/revising the finding aid per cubic
foot
90 of permanent collections have finding aids
with folder-level detail or greater 68 of
permanent collections (and counting) have online
finding aids with full-text search
capabilities 5 decrease (on average) in the size
of collections that were rehoused 472.25 cubic
feet of non-archival materials were removed from
the permanent records and deaccessioned
Lessons Learned/Advice to Other
Archives Minimally process all collections at
time of transfer. We began moving towards what is
now known as minimal processing in 2000,
requiring all new transfers of records to be in
folders in acid-free boxes with a folder-level
finding aid at the time of the acquisition.
Materials accessioned since then generally only
required spot-checking prior to moves. Even if
you will not be moving, minimally processing
collections at time of transfer will prevent
large backlogs, allow for more timely access to
the records, and identify preservation problems
before they worsen. All of this ultimately saves
time. Plan, coordinate, and make the right
friends. Plan as early and as obsessively as
possible, but be flexible to allow for
circumstances outside of your control. With the
amount of detail that needs to be checked, a
third or even fourth set of eyes may find an
error that could create problems during the move
itself. Write instructions for everything and be
sure they are available to everyone. Coordinate
with all staff who will be involved with the move
so that everyone knows what needs to happen and
when. Dont forget other departments, facilities
staff, loading dock staff, security, and the
movers. Lack of coordination could result in
unnecessary downtime, traffic jams, or even
total chaos. Making friends with the support
staff such as facilities or security will not
only make the move more pleasant, but you may be
able to call on them for favors to help the
process run more smoothly. Instead of just
giving orders, particularly to the movers,
explain why it is important that a task be
performed in a particular way. Theyll
appreciate why you want it done that way and be
more likely to perform the task
correctly. Maximize the utility of your
collections management system. Without our
collections management system (CMS), we could not
have performed the preparations or the moves as
efficiently or quickly as we did. It allowed us
to track where every box was at any given moment,
who worked on each collection, how each
collection was physically improved, what still
needed to be done to each collection, and where
the most current version of each finding aid
could be found. Since all of these tables and
forms were built into CMS years ago, there was no
need to retroactively enter the necessary data to
create the reports and statistics we needed.
Facilities
Former Off-site Storage
Former On-site Storage
On-site Storage
Records Center
Commercial Storage
Former Records Center