Learning on the Job: A Recent Graduate’s Foray into Accessioning Description

By Rachel Poppen

During the past year, I graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with my Master of Science in Information Studies and moved across the country to The University of Iowa to start my first full-time position as the Collections Archivist for the Special Collections and Archives (SCA). The bulk of my new job includes accessioning and processing collections relating to the University Archives. As a graduate student, I was able to get hands-on experience processing through class practicums and student jobs, which helped me cultivate confidence and a deeper understanding of the physical activity of processing. In contrast, my only accessioning experiences were limited to classroom lectures and discussions. While these in-class activities were certainly useful and taught me about different theoretical concepts of accessioning, when I saw the first items on the shelf that I was responsible for accessioning, it became apparent that the activity of accessioning was something I would have to learn to do on the job.

The University Archives has a significant backlog of unprocessed material, as well as unaccessioned material from recent staff turnover.  Amping up our accessioning workflows has been one way we have identified to address this backlog. Luckily, accessioning isn’t entirely divorced from processing and many of the skills are transferable – particularly because I was already familiar with ArchivesSpace, the software SCA uses to manage our collections and accessions. Notably, many of the fields are the same, whether it is a resource record or an accession record, and dating items and managing containers are important steps in both accessioning and processing. However, there are some differences between the two that pose a challenge.

For me, the largest challenge between accessioning and processing has been the lack of professional standards and guidance related to accessioning. This, in combination with the increased flexibility in how to describe accessions, means that archivists have a lot of discretion when it comes to accessioning description. One of the things I’ve found most difficult and am still working on learning is titling the accessions. While collection titles have a dedicated, detailed DACS section, accession titles are more in a state of limbo. This flexibility can be of great benefit, as they can provide more detail on the actual contents, but it is a bit intimidating when you are used to the more rigid standards of naming collections. Developing the discretion to know how to appropriately name an accession so it is searchable without being overly long and detailed is something I am still working on and I’m sure will come with continued practice.

For me, this uncertainty with titles is compounded withe similar title, collection description, and inventory fields in ArchivesSpace. Determining what information belongs in which field, how much detail is too much, and how to make these fields non-redundant is my biggest source of uncertainty in accessioning description. It has helped me to think of these fields as additional description for larger accessions, where it isn’t possible to fully describe the accession in the title or that have multiple containers. One-item accessions, as much as I have tried, don’t need their descriptions rehashed with little variation repeatedly in a single accession record. On the flip side, the complete aversion to any form of redundancy is also not an appropriate way to approach these fields in accession records. It is okay if a few things repeat in the accession record, particularly if it will benefit the future processors (such as an inventory that describes where materials mentioned in the title or collection description reside) or strengthen reports that only use certain fields, instead of the entire record.

Something that was a blessing in disguise for me was the fact that my institution is currently in the process of establishing institutional accessioning guidelines. Although it was (and is) difficult to understand how to accession at a particular institution without examples and guidelines, being able to contribute to my institution’s accessioning standards has been one of the greatest tools I’ve had to understand accessioning better. Working with the guidelines brought me to a mental place where I was thinking about the purpose of each field in the accession record and what responses best filled the need for that field to exist, rather than filling out the fields based on rote responses to vague prompts. Even if you are in an institution with more established accessioning guidelines, taking the time to interact and think deeply about how and why your institution approaches accessioning is probably the best advice I can give to other people in my situation.

To all the other archivists also learning to accession on the job – you got this! I’m excited for everything we are going to learn to do and the new ways we will be able to leverage accessioning to improve our collections. I also want to thank our supervisors and colleagues, particularly Sarah Keen (University Archivist at The University of Iowa), for her patience, guidance, and enthusiasm for answering questions. Our repositories will be all the better for having more archivists that can utilize accessioning.

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Rachel Poppen is the Collections Archivist for the University Archives at The University of Iowa. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with her Master of Science in Information Studies in May 2023 and is an early career member on the Society of American Archivists’ International Archival Affairs Steering Committee.