Descriptive Notes is soliciting posts for an upcoming series on extensible and iterative archival processing in practice.
How has your repository put extensible or iterative approaches to processing and description into operation? What does "good enough for access" mean in your institutional context? Where do you begin, what do you defer, and how do you decide when-or whether-to return to a collection for additional processing? How have staffing, systems, collection formats, researcher needs, institutional expectations, or legacy practices shaped what is possible?
Descriptive Notes is looking for articles, case studies, reflections, and other posts that examine the realities of implementing scalable, access-oriented approaches to archival processing and description. We are particularly interested in accounts of work as it is actually being done: approaches that have evolved over time, compromises between theory and local conditions, unexpected successes or difficulties, and approaches to closing the loop between baseline processing and access.
Posts might consider themes such as: accessioning-as-processing and other approaches that provide intellectual control early in the lifecycle of a collection; establishing and applying baseline levels of arrangement and description; deciding when more intensive processing is warranted; documenting work left for future iteration; revisiting collections in response to use, risk, or new priorities; adapting extensible approaches for particular formats or collection types; and the systems, policies, or organizational changes needed to make iterative work sustainable.
We also welcome contributions about implementations that remain incomplete or imperfect. Extensibility and iteration necessarily depend on local context, and we hope this series can make visible the range of choices, constraints, and judgment involved in translating these ideas into everyday archival practice.
Submit your pitches to saadescription@gmail.com. You can read more about our submission guidelines here: https://saadescription.wordpress.com/guidelines/
Best,
Betts Coup
Lead Editor, Descriptive Notes
------------------------------
Betts Coup
Head of Archival Operations
Technical Services for Archives & Special Collections
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
------------------------------