Selecting and Storing Collections in a Library

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Archivists should try to collect records that have enduring value (Module #2: Archival Appraisal and Acquisition, n.d.). However, one problem is that value is subjective, and determining which records will have value (whether currently or in the future) is a difficult task. Not only does it require interacting with the public and gaining an understanding of what the public is likely to value, it requires knowing what records one has in the first place (Evans, Saponaro, 2012; Johnson, 2014). As the article by Somers (2017) shows, for a big library archive, there is simply not enough man power to even go through all the records sufficiently. This means that indexing them is a slow process, which often leads donors and patrons to complain of delays in obtaining access to material that has been donated but not yet fully archived. Additionally, Somers (2017) notes that oftentimes, archivists take time to organize the files in a more categorical way, even though one of the key concepts of archival arrangement is to maintain records in the order given them by their creator (Archival Arrangement and Description, n.d.). In many cases, knowing the original order or simply identifying it can be time-consuming, especially if material obtained is disheveled (such as notes, letters, journals, clippings, etc.). New recommendations from a paper titled “More Product, Less Process” urged librarians to move through materials more quickly: “Pointing out that as much as 80 percent of the archivists’ time was spent “refoldering,” the paper offered shortcuts that, it claimed, would make more collections available without sacrificing much in the way of intellectual accessibility” (Somers, 2017).

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However, these shortcuts come at the risk of losing a sense of what is truly in one’s possession.

The problem of going through records piece by piece and labeling them minutely so that researchers can know what is on file and where it can be found is that the amount of material to be catalogued is just too great. It cannot all be gone through. Yet if it is not all gone through, it is hard to know what is actually possessed. One solution to this could be to use volunteers—professional or retired researchers who have experience researching and labeling records. They could easily be trained by library staff to do the job that libraries do not have the funds and resources to do themselves. In order for researchers to know what libraries have in their possession and to be able to access them, the material must be read, sorted and catalogued—and there is no easy or simple way to cut corners on this process. Thus, enlisting the aid of individuals who would be willing to donate their time for the sake of the researching community is undoubtedly the best approach in addressing this issue. This would be much more preferable than the approach identified by Somers (2017), which is that librarians not actually read all the material they are cataloguing, but merely go through it and get a sense for what it is. This could lead to potentially very valuable documents being “lost” in a collection, and that should not happen.


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