Twenty-two Heads Are Better Than One: A Multi-Institution Approach to Addressing Backlogs

1
Twenty-two Heads Are Better Than One A
Multi-Institution Approach to Addressing Backlogs

• For Something New for Something Old PACSCL
  Conference
• December 4, 2008
• Christine Di Bella

2
PACSCL Consortial Survey Initiative

• Survey of unprocessed and underprocessed
  collections in 22 Philadelphia area institutions
  over 2,100 collections and nearly 20,000 linear
  feet.
• Assess characteristics such as physical
  condition, quality of housing, physical access
  (arrangement), intellectual access (description),
  documentation quality and interest (Research
  Value Rating).
• Produce data that can be used for both collection
  management and access purposes.

3
Intended uses for data

• Prioritization for
• Processing
• Conservation
• Digitization
• Deaccessioning or collection swaps
• Output collection-level data using various
  standards (MARC, EAD chief among them)
• Promotion of collections
• Pointing researchers to related material

4
Why this was needed in PACSCL

• Individual institutions were wrestling with their
  backlogs and needed a way to address them.
• PACSCL needed a better way to identify and
  develop multi-institution projects.
• Overlaps in collecting (intentional and
  unintentional) suggested a multi-institution
  survey might yield unexpected connections.
• Dream of one-click access to Philadelphias
  special collections.

5
Why more institutions and groups of
institutions should be doing this

• Gathering hard data about our collections
• Quantifying what seems unquantifiable
• Cross-collection and cross-institution
  comparison.
• Transparency

6
Opportunities

• Places us in a position to
• Push for and develop common standards for other
  aspects of archives and special collections work.
• Develop truly collaborative projects, that go
  beyond the each tub on its own bottom approach.

7
Challenges

• Artificial distinction between assessment and
  regular work.
• Only able to survey part of each institutions
  holdings, so does not reflect everything.
• Unprocessed and underprocessed have different
  meanings for different institutions
• Extensiveness of surveying at an institution
  determined by their definition.
• Getting people to continue using the ratings and
  the system after the survey team is gone.
• Important to recognize that in order to be
  effective assessment must be an ongoing, not a
  one-time, process.

8
Addressing the challenges and building toward
sustainability

• Training sessions that teach staff at the
  institution to survey, even if they did not
  survey for this project.
• Documentation and presentations.
• Building methodology into systems and tools that
  people will be using anyway.
• Archivists Toolkit

9
Future directions

• User studies to see which collections actually
  get used (in conjunction with grant project we
  hope to get funded)
• Building out assessment for other types of
  material

10
Why I couldnt be here today