By Emma Barton-Norris
Image above: Photograph of the workroom in the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, highlighting the additional use of a physical (and fun) method of tracking progress of projects that includes a column for the preliminary checklist and is a checklist itself. Photo by the author.
In August 2023, I was hired as a full-time processing archivist in Bowdoin College’s George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, to focus on arranging and describing collections with little to no description. Over the years, SC&A has seen dramatic increases to use of the collections for research and teaching, and meeting those immediate needs made keeping up with formal processing work challenging. Minimalist strategies such as inventories and accession records provided some access for staff, enabling the department to provide research and instruction services. This backlog — nearly 1,300 linear feet of unprocessed material plus born-digital files — awaited me when I started my first day at Bowdoin. In the weeks that followed, the college’s Archivist and I began creating a new processing workflow that specifically mandated the use of a preliminary checklist to establish a higher level of intellectual control over unprocessed collections at the beginning of each processing project. Sharing this information on the Bowdoin College Library’s internal wiki, I have been able to develop a successful, organized, and most importantly shared, project management strategy.
In processing, our primary goal is to make the material in the archive become an accessible body of information to be used. Processing, most simply put, is the physical (or digital) arranging and describing of archival materials into a collection, papers, or records. I believe processing is at the foundation of all archival work. It sets in motion the rest of the archives’ ecosystem. Without processing and processors, the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives would not be able to serve its patrons and complete its mission to “collect, administer, preserve, and make available holdings that document the College’s remarkable history and place in the world, and that support the teaching, research, and learning needs of the Bowdoin community” (from the Collection Development Policy, accessed 9/13/2023).
Tackling the backlog presented a great opportunity to create a more formal processing manual that would guide the next several years of work. This was a critical step of my first few weeks working at Bowdoin. With the lofty goal of processing 1,300 linear feet during my three (to five) year term position, a detailed management strategy had to be developed at the very beginning. The approach we decided to undertake forwent the creation of an in-depth or convoluted processing manual and preferred the use of a collaborative and to-the-point description of how Bowdoin wants to approach processing shared on the college library’s web-based wiki (stored on the “Collaboration Tool” Confluence, https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features). This included the use of a preliminary checklist of places and materials to review prior to embarking on every processing project.
The preliminary checklist that was created encompasses a handful of places, both physical and digital, that should be checked prior to pulling the unprocessed material itself to survey. These include:
- reviewing any accession records that are in ArchivesSpace,
- reviewing any documentation in the Collection Control File (resident name for donor files that includes any deeds of gift that are housed in both physical and digital forms),
- reviewing any processed material if it is an addition to an existing collection,
- checking our processing priorities spreadsheet and ArchivesSpace for any related materials in either the processed collections or the backlog,
- checking the library’s hard drive for any relevant special format materials in the Audiovisual inventory and Electronic Records spreadsheets,
- and conducting research regarding the creator of the collection (often in the form of a Google search to aid in writing the biographical note later).
This checklist marked a turning point in my own understanding of what can, or should, be labeled as processing work. Developing this checklist allowed us to describe the often-undescribed labor that is required when a processor first begins a project, specifically in the context of an archive that historically lacked any active or consistent processing work.
I found that establishing new archival processing procedures in the form of a shared wiki was ideal for describing the lifecycle of projects at Bowdoin. Rather than re-writing other institutions’ high-level theory and practice of processing, we decided to simply refer to the robust (and longform) processing manuals that have been useful to us in our own past practice. Formatting our workflow as a short form, collaborative space that can be shared and edited by all library staff allowed us to provide a working environment for our project management. The wiki became a central place for finding information on what was going on in the processing workroom.
The wiki and its checklist have greatly improved my own thoughtfulness when arranging and describing the archival collections in Bowdoin College Library. Its power lies in its ability to create space for me to slow down and approach each collection with the same level of physical and intellectual control. This space of curiosity and learning has become an integral piece in our project management strategy. It has encouraged me through the first 100 linear feet of newly processed material and will continue to do so for the next 1,200.
Emma Barton-Norris is a processing archivist at Bowdoin College’s George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives located in Brunswick, Maine. Emma joined Bowdoin in August 2023, the same year she graduated from University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science.
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