Information for Community Archives: Accessioning

Information for Community Archives

Accessioning / by L. Lorch

PRELIMINARY DRAFT

Archival acquisitions may seem simple. Go pick-up the stuff, right?! But any foolproof acquisitions trip begins long before you retrieve any records. Taking appropriate steps to develop an adequate acquisitions policy prior to collecting records helps to alleviate future archival headaches.

First and foremost you must consider whether you are capable and ready to serve as proper stewards of archive. Do you have climate-controlled, secure storage available? Have you identified trained archivists, students, or volunteers to process and care for the materials? Are funds available for archival supplies? Are there intellectual property issues that might prevent you from making the records accessible? If you want to collect but cannot answer yes to the above questions, stop. You should address these issues before acquiring materials.

Once the logistical factors for collecting have been met, you must then decide what you want to collect. This determination should be made based on several factors including the general role and mission of your organization, the types of materials already housed in your collection, the research needs of the community you serve, and the collection content of the local institutions and repositories nearby. Question whether you will accept only paper documents and photos or also memorabilia and three-dimensional objects, audio-visual materials, and electronic records.

Prior to retrieving any material, gather information from the donor or source of the acquisition during a pre-acquisitions interview. You should assess how much and what type of material is available, where the material located (crawl space, moldy attic, locked warehouse), whether any potential restrictions or privacy issues exist (Social Security numbers, personal health information, etc.), and how the material is housed (already in boxes, in file cabinets, etc.). Ask that they not disturb the original order. With the information you have gathered during your interview, assess whether a personal car or larger truck will be necessary to retrieve the collection. Then, when you visit the site to pick-up the collection, take your own boxes and enough people to handle the task. While retrieving the materials, keep the materials in their original order. Label each box with the donation date, collection title, box number, and other necessary identifying information. Also, make note of conservation concerns, evidence of pests, and other damage. If evidence of these conservation issues is found, separate the specific materials from the rest of the collection. You do not want these items to contaminate the rest of the collections.

The final, and arguably most important, step in the acquisitions process is the deed of gift. Without a signed deed of gift, the collection rests on the shelf as a “loan,” essentially in legal limbo. You may choose to accept collections “on deposit” or “on loan,” but do so at your own risk. Should the donor ever change their mind and wish to donate the papers to another institution or simply retrieve them for their own personal use, your repository may not have legal grounds to stop them. Such occasions can be especially painful if resources already have been expended conserving or processing the collection. In such a situation the money wasted in human hours and supplies far surpasses the amount needed to pay an attorney to draw up a deed of gift template.

A well constructed acquisitions policy serves many purposes. The policy provides a guided framework for materials selection and building archival holdings in order to collect more coherently and progressively in a selected area. Your repository can better plan to budget its limited resources for preservation and storage. It enables archivists to explain better to donors and other institutions their records' significance and to reject conflicting unsolicited collections. Continuity in selection and acquisitions is maintained when staff turnover occurs.

Accessioning guidelines

Assigning a number to a collection

Sample deeds of gift

Filing system &/or acquisition database

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