Connecting to Collections Care

We have recently received a three-ring binder scrap book type donation that6 includes many copies of newspaper articles as well as several pages of color photographs.  They are all encased in plastic sleeves that will need to be changed to acid-free sleeves.

We do not, at this time, have a procedure manual  on how to accession this large a collection.  Would each item require its own object ID, or could some of them be grouped together to reduce the amount of time involved when adding them to our data-base. We are currently using Past Perfect Web Addition.

There is also the question of how to best handle the photos because there are groups of 3 or 4 pasted to card stock which we are not ready to remove from their backing until we are certain how best to proceed.

Jim Hansmann

Castle Rock Museum

Castle Rock, CO.

Jim,

Two thoughts: first, is this material that should be accessioned, in full or in part, or would it be more appropriately treated as research files?  The local historical society which I serve as a member of the Collections Committee does not generally accession newspaper clippings, for example, but would keep them as unaccessioned research materials.  They might well accession some or all of the photographs in a collection similar to yours.

Second, if you do decide to accession all or part of this collection, would it be best to process them as archival materials? (Although I am still using the network version of PastPerfect, I am guessing the Web Edition also has an Archives module.)  Although I am not an archivist, I know that archival collections are generally not cataloged on the item level, and that would seem appropriate in this case.  

Hopefully others will chime in with their ideas as well...

Good luck!

One thing you can consider as you decide how to process it is what the primary value of the collection is and how you think it will be used in the future. If the primary value of the collection is the scrapbook as a whole, then I would recommend doing as others have suggested and giving the whole scrapbook one single object ID and one record in PastPerfect. This is my typical approach with scrapbooks, because often the value of the scrapbook comes from it being a deliberately curated and organized collection of materials. The point of the item is that the donor chose these specific photos and clippings and kept them together as one item, so it makes sense to process it as one item. You can then include photos of individual pages, or create a written description of each page and include that in the record, or just do a short description of the overall contents of the scrapbook and leave it at that. (PastPerfect lets you upload PDFs in the "attachments and urls" accordion, so the description doesn't have to be a million miles long if you go the written description route.)

If, however, you decide that the individual items are the important part of the collection, and that you may want to, for example, exhibit individual photographs rather than the whole scrapbook, then it may be worth deconstructing the scrapbook and assigning each item an individual object number.  As you've said, this is definitely the more time consuming method, and in my experience isn't usually super worth it for scrapbooks. 

Other things you can consider when deciding how to approach it:

-How would you use the item in the future? Is it something you would only use in its entirety, or is it something you would pull individual documents from? (i.e. exhibiting photos on their own, using clippings for research on their own.) Does the value of being able to easily find the individual photos and clippings in PastPerfect outweigh the time it will take to create all those individual records, or will you end up with two dozen records that are variations on "photos of the rodeo, 19xx"?

-How do you plan to store the collection? If you're planning to fully deconstruct the scrapbook, it may be worth taking the time to individually catalog all the elements so that they don't get lost and end up as FICs down the line. If you're planning to keep it all together, then it may make more sense to treat the collection as a single item and note in the record how many pages/loose items there are. 

In terms of your question about the photographs, I've seen that done in a couple ways. Again, it'll depend on how useful it is to you to be able to quickly access records for an individual photos. I've seen some people give one number to the page and list each photo in the record description (under the rationale that the page is the "object") and I've seen other people give each photo on the page its own number and record (under the rationale that the photo is the "object"). I tend more towards the first option, but it depends on your needs and your capacities. 

Good luck! Scrapbooks are so cool, but boy can they be a pain to deal with as collections items!

Thank you all for the wealth of information.  And Doug, the Web edition does still have the Archives module