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This article was downloaded by: [Queensland University of Technology]On: 31 October 2014, At: 05:23Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Maximal Processing, or, Archivist on aPale HorseRobert S. Cox aa University of Massachussetts Amherst , Amherst, Massachussetts,USAPublished online: 24 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Robert S. Cox (2010) Maximal Processing, or, Archivist on a Pale Horse, Journal ofArchival Organization, 8:2, 134-148, DOI: 10.1080/15332748.2010.526086
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Journal of Archival Organization, 8:134–148, 2010Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1533-2748 print / 1533-2756 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15332748.2010.526086
Maximal Processing, or, Archiviston a Pale Horse
ROBERT S. COXUniversity of Massachussetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachussetts, USA
With the promise of greater economy in handling an ever-increasing volume of material, minimal processing has quicklybecome a new orthodoxy for the archival profession despite a raftof unintended consequences for service and discovery. Taking along-term view of the costs and benefits entailed in the process ofprocessing, the three-stage maximal processing alternative suggestsinstead that archivists focus on maximizing the intellectual care ofcollections while acknowledging the realities of strained resources.Beginning with a comprehensive collection survey and making useof our full professional judgment, the maximal approach privilegesvalues and aspirations over barriers and limitations.
KEYWORDS processing, minimal processing, maximal process-ing, description, finding aids
Address correspondence to Robert S. Cox, Special Collections and University Archives,W. E. B. Dubois Library, 154 Hicks Way, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA01003-9275. E-mail: [email protected]
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A case can be made that the painter Albert Pinkham Ryder deserves a seatat the table with the framers of modern archival praxis, and that his master-work, The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse), fits well with the writings ofSchellenberg and Jenkinson and the holy trinity of Muller, Feith, and Fruin.While not precisely an archival manual, Ryder’s pale rider is neverthelessthe embodiment of the archival condition, a symbolic depiction of the spiritrequired to reap the tangible evidence of human lives and preserve it forall eternity. Some archivists will question the rider’s undertheorized methodsof appraisal, but all of us can identify with the relentlessness he displaysin pursuit of his goals and admire his determination, his efficiency, and un-flagging zeal. All of us can admire the scope, the sheer ambition, of hisproject.
If the equation between the archivist and the grim reaper is unsettling,perhaps it is because of the double symbolic meaning underlying the race-track on which the reaper rides. In the first meaning, the track can be seento stand for a tendency we share with our pale colleague to circle round andround in our theorizing. In our amnesiac professions, those of us who do notlearn from the past are condemned to reinvent it, and we have driven everonward, wielding our sharpest technologies as we visit and revisit a suite ofseemingly irresolvable tensions at the core of our profession: tensions be-tween technological innovation and technological gaps, between the desirefor uniformity in standards and the need to accommodate diversity in ourcollections and researchers, the tension between our ideals and the realitiesof our resources.
In 2005, Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner offered a resolution to oneof the most perplexing of these tensions: the tension between our desireto provide superior physical care and descriptive depth for our collectionsand the resultant proliferation of our unprocessed backlog. Urging archiviststo dedicate themselves to producing “more product, less process,” Greeneand Meissner have become the great sowers (rather than reapers) of a newapproach to archival processing. With its clear and compelling goal of max-imizing “the accessibility of collection materials to users” by shedding non-productive tasks, their approach, now called minimal processing, has beensiren song for the many archivists who feel trapped between the competingdemands of professional work.1
And archivists have responded to that song. As if a sudden wave of reliefcould be heard issuing from the archival masses, as if a palpable sigh signaledthat we have at last discovered an indulgence for our professional sins,archivists have been heard preaching the virtues of minimal processing andthe benefits—intellectual, financial, and psychological—it brings. Minimalprocessing provides both penance and absolution for the guilt we have toolong felt over our backlogs. As one proponent of minimal processing asked,“How can any idea that pleases researchers, donors, resource allocators, andstaff alike be anything but a good thing?”2
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This question, I suspect, is not rhetorical, for it is here that the sec-ond symbolic meaning of Ryder’s racetrack comes into play. In its circularityand unbroken continuity, the racetrack reminds us how thoroughly inter-connected our professional praxis can be. In the archival world, theory andpractice are (or should be) seamless, one feeding into the other, and the var-ied facets of our professional plans, processes, and products are so tightlyinterwoven that to adjust any single thread will have implications for manyothers. Just as the desire for descriptive depth produced the unintended con-sequence of the backlog, so too will any alteration of descriptive practicehave a broad and potentially unpredictable impact.
In this essay, I wish to introduce an approach to processing that wehave employed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 2004 (andelsewhere, in some form, prior) that seeks to pursue these interconnections,an approach we call maximal processing. Strictly speaking, maximal process-ing is not an alternative to minimal processing but rather a contextualizationof it; it is an approach designed to situate the descriptive process within thecontinuum of our professional activities and responsibilities, setting sights onwhat we can attain. Throughout, I hope to distinguish the conceptual basisfor Greene and Meissner’s model—which is largely consistent with maximalprocessing—from the manner in which these concepts have often been op-erationalized, and to suggest why it is that we need, again, to revisit the mostfundamental of archival practices.
LIFE ON THE MINIMUM
In its most basic form, the call for minimal processing is a call for archiviststo confront two basic professional concerns: first, to eliminate our unde-scribed backlog (quickly), and second to apply a rigorous and thoroughgo-ing cost/benefit analysis to what might be called the process of processing.To the extent that few archivists would argue that exposure of our collec-tions is anything but a professional and ethical imperative, an unalloyedgood, and to the degree that in a hemorrhagic economy it is essential to beprudent financial stewards, the minimal processing model should be thor-oughly uncontroversial. And so, in general, it has been, finding a wide andavid audience across the profession.
For the few critics of minimal processing, however, a devil may lurk inthe details of how the model has been applied and, in particular, in howcosts and benefits are assessed. At one level, the argument for minimal pro-cessing is an economic one, rooted in the perception that archivists have toooften failed to deliver products and services in a timely and cost-effectivemanner. In succinct fashion, Greene and Meissner identified a suite of labor-intensive, but underproductive practices that had become ritualized in ourwork and internalized in our archival psyches. Foremost among these are the
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tasks involved in the physical care of collections, including the removal ofpaperclips and staples; refoldering, reboxing, and relabeling; and unfolding,cleaning, or otherwise tending to individual documents.3 Although genera-tions of archivists have been catechized in the faith that these labor-intensiveactivities are essential to the eternal futures of our collections, Greene andMeissner noted just how little empirical evidence there is for such a con-tention. With a few clear caveats—we have all seen the effect of acidicfolders on less acidic contents—there is little reason to disagree. In thoseinstances where treatment is judged necessary, they emphasized, archivistsshould intervene.
The urge to streamline archival processes, however, cannot be sati-ated by physical care alone. Greene and Meissner also urged archivists tolimit—minimize—arrangement and description, all in the name of taming thebacklog. Archivists have so fetishized physical arrangement, they claimed,and spend so much time in tidying, shuffling, and reshuffling folders, thatthey can justly be accused of practicing “overzealous housekeeping, writlarge.”4 Following Greene and Meissner, many archivists now forego rear-rangement entirely, simply transcribing folder titles as they come, sorting theinventory electronically, and perhaps applying a handful of subject terms toa box or series. They abandon all hope of greater detail.
In many ways, description echoes arrangement. Citing Michael Fox andPeter Wilkerson, Greene and Meissner asserted that there are three purposesfor a finding aid: to facilitate discovery, establish authenticity, and satisfyadministrative needs. A “crisp, simple presentation with minimal verbiage,”they argued, should suffice to achieve each end.5 Collections, they argued,should be described only at a level of detail appropriate to the level ofarrangement (minimal arrangement, in other words, should breed minimaldescription). In their estimation, finding aids have too often been writtento feed archival egos, becoming a platform to demonstrate the archivist’s“level of knowledge” of the collection and subject matter, rather than servingthe more parsimonious goal of providing “acceptable access.” “Let’s wasteneither our own valuable time researching and writing lengthy narratives,”they pled, “nor our researcher’s time by forcing them to read more verbiagethan necessary.”6 In a recent review of minimal processing, Matt Gorzalskiwent even further: “Archivists must stop concerning themselves with an ideallevel of processing,” he wrote, “and process only to an appropriate level thatmakes the collection [minimally] usable.”7 It seems that one size fits all, aslong as that size is minimal.
Several archivists have added their own epicycles to this new constella-tion, tracing an array of novel paths for reducing costs in description, fromemploying user-generated metadata to exploiting crowd sourcing, wikifiedfinding aids, and partial processing, to finding synergies between acces-sioning and processing. At Yale, Christine Weideman requested that donorsshoulder much of the burden for arrangement and description, and she, like
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other proponents of minimal standards, noted that the donors are thrilled tosee their collections appear rapidly on the archive’s Web site.8
Driven by the realization that we have not kept pace with the demandsof modern archival work, we are now approaching a new orthodoxy inwhich minimal standards prevail. Greene and Meissner’s insistence that noteverything need be done to every collection has sometimes, it seems, givenway to a new orthodoxy in which every collection is treated identically,minimally, such that we are threatening to supplant one rigid orthodoxywith another, the dogmatic insistence on high standards surrendering to anequally dogmatic insistence that the minimum is (almost) always enough.Minimal institutions have indeed increased their descriptive throughput, butat what cost? Have we moved toward the big box model in which we shelvematerials efficiently, but lose the connection with our products and services,with our customer base?
TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES
Any assessment of the true costs and benefits entailed in processing needsto begin with an analysis of the full impact of our processing decisions, animpact that extends well beyond the dollars and cents of folders, boxes, andstaff time. At a fundamental level, we need to draw the distinction betweenthe impact of private costs—those borne by the individual as a result ofhis or her transactions—and external costs, which result when the costs ofan individual’s social or economic activities are passed on to others. At thispoint in the development of minimal processing, this cost/benefit analysishas been concerned almost exclusively with an estimation of the private costsincurred by processors; however, the social cost (the sum of private plus ex-ternal costs) may be the more appropriate metric. Archivists are enmeshedin a complex web of practical, professional, and ethical relationships with(inter alia) co-workers, other archivists, administrators, donors, “the public,”and researchers, and directly or indirectly, costs accrue to each constituency.Many of these external costs are difficult to estimate, particularly when pro-jected across the long term, but regardless, discussions of the “efficiency” oreconomy of minimal processing cannot be reduced simply to a measure ofhours per linear foot or the price of enclosures.
Tiah Edmundson-Morton was among the first to call attention to thesocial costs of minimal processing (although she is not guilty of using thoseterms), pointing to the cost implications of minimal standards for appraisal,the management of privacy rights, intellectual control of our collections, andreference service, and she could as well have added the long-term impactof the inadequate housing of materials, reduced security, and opportunitieslost in research, instruction, and marketing.9 More diffusely, she raised theessentially unanswerable question of the intangible costs that accrue through
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reduced self-satisfaction on the job (a personal response, to be sure) andthrough the altered perception of our profession by others. The dire handof the hard-times administrator looms behind her words.
Even some of the most ardent proponents of minimal processing agreewith much of what Edmundson-Morton had to say. If a collection is lesswell described, less well organized, and less well understood, logic dictatesthat, all things being equal, it must take longer for archivists to navigate thecollection when conducting reference work or when performing any of theother tasks that make use of the actual materials. Similarly, less thoroughappraisal results in the retention of a greater quantity of duplicate and outof scope material, thus occupying added space in the stacks, and of course,serious preservation issues may never be seen at all. Proponents of minimalprocessing insist, however, that the small increases in post-processing workand expense that result from minimal processing are more than compensatedfor by the reduction in processing costs. Despite a paucity of empirical datato support this claim, and despite the too-limited framework for assessingthe costs involved, some of the more Panglossian minimalists insist thatwhile external costs are accrued, the increase is “probably not an excessiveamount.”10
But these costs are real, and over time, they accumulate. Perhaps it is justmy inner geologist speaking, but small effects operating over a long time canhave large consequences, and in that regard economics and tectonics are notso far apart. The additional costs imposed on appraisal, reference, retrieval,and preservation may individually be small, but when tabulated across theentire minimally processed corpus and extended across the decades in whichwe curate those collections, it becomes more difficult to dismiss the costs as“probably” not excessive.
More significantly still, these costs are at least partially passed along toour researchers, and, for those who travel some distance to work with a col-lection, the additional expenditure in time and effort may be determinative.The recent claim that researchers are “dissatisfied” with item-level inventoriesor that they care little about finding aids sits curiously with a range of studiesthat over the years that have emphasized the value placed by researchers onan archivist’s knowledge of their collections and archival systems. Empiricalstudies have suggested that finding aids continue to be relevant in the digitalage and that researchers clamor for more detailed, more tightly focused, andmore highly contextualized information. Several archivists, and the codesof ethics for our archival organizations, continue to insist upon our ethicalresponsibility to provide the “fullest possible access. . .to the greatest extentpossible, compatible with institutional policies, preservation of holdings, le-gal responsibilities, and judicious use of archival resources.”11
When it comes to our most heavily used collections, the situation maybe more acute still, emphasizing even more the value of rich description. Intwo now-ancient but robust studies of historians’ use of historical collections,
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Frederic Miller and Jacqueline Goggin independently discovered that archivalcollections are distinctly underutilized when compared with the “relativelyhigh use” of personal papers.12 Personal papers, Miller concluded, tend tobe “easy to use and comparatively well-processed,” and therefore more ac-cessible to researchers, while “the lack of effective arrangement and descrip-tion” in archival collections presents an impediment.13 Limited description,as much as the intrinsic quality of the collection, impedes research. Universalaccess is an unalloyed good, we can all agree, but not all access is equal.Collections will be more frequently used when they are more frequentlydiscovered and more easily navigated. Just as it should go without sayingthat the support of a well-informed archivist is a positive, so too should werecognize the value of high quality description. The dissatisfaction expressedby some researchers with regard to finding aids may say more about the stateof those finding aids than we care to admit.14
In examining these issues, it is critical to distinguish the benefits gainedfrom the exposure of collections from the benefits of minimal processing, perse. Exposure is indeed a product of minimal processing, but to conclude thatthe pleasure donors feel upon seeing their collections online is a result ofminimal standards is to conflate the results with the process, the ends for themeans. Donors do appreciate the exposure, and researchers will naturallyprefer to learn about and use collections rather than have them hidden away,but given a choice, it would be hard to claim that they prefer the minimalbecause it is minimal or that they would prefer the minimal to somethingmore robust.
Perhaps the most significant external costs incurred in minimal pro-cessing, however, are those resulting from the reduction in the descriptivecontent in finding aids and the impact this has upon discovery, an impactborne by archivist and researcher alike. Statisticians distinguish Type I fromType II errors—false positives and false negatives, respectively—howeverthe literature on minimal processing has been concerned almost exclusivelywith an assessment of the former, the inefficiencies and frustrations that re-sult when researchers or archivists are forced to wade through box afterbox in search of information they are led to believe may be present. Falsenegatives, however, are more pernicious: Led to believe that the desiredinformation is not present, prospective researchers may never inquire fur-ther, or, in the case of Google-stalkers, may never know to inquire in thefirst place. A collection that is never discovered might as well never be de-scribed, and in the free-range world of Google, the likelihood of a minimallydescribed collection fading into the haze of results sets, or not appearing atall, is appallingly high. Perhaps this is the ultimate cost to an active archive:the loss of prospective users.
Archivists too often assume that researchers are masters of their subjectmatter, and that efforts to provide descriptive detail are therefore superfluous.Certainly some researchers do have deep knowledge of their subjects, and
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certain categories of researcher are indeed name-oriented, but the claimcan easily be overstated and sometimes bears more than a trace of thelegacy of “great white dead man history.”15 Although the expectation that ourresearchers will know the names of individuals and organizations in whomthey are interested is deeply seated in our profession, many contemporaryhistorians are more concerned with ideas and actions, cultural moments andcontexts than they are with individuals and discrete events. For many, namesare not a priority. For others, names are not a possibility.
Without wishing to be cynical about it, we should consider that manyof our researchers simply do not know their subject particularly well. Someare embarking on new projects (like many graduate students), others arenew to research (most undergraduates), some come from other research tra-ditions entirely (like many genealogists). Whoever they may be, however,many will make valuable and extensive use of collections that are periph-eral to their expertise. Indeed, one of the benefits we have found in havingcollection descriptions online is that we attract new researchers who hadnever known about our institution and whose expertise lies in subject mat-ter far afield from the generality of our holdings. Any practicing archivistcan point to an example of an expert in the cultural history of science, forexample, who has made hay from an anonymous Civil War soldier’s letters,or a researcher who mines plantation records from the eighteenth-centuryCaribbean to study climate change. Expertise and utility are not yoked likesome brace of intellectual oxen and one need not be Clifford Geertz torecognize that thick description affords greater opportunities to find unex-pected connections, providing benefits for a wider range of researchers. Inan online environment in particular, finding aids function like Velcro: thegreater the surface area, the greater the chance that something will stickfirmly.
At some point in the past, perhaps, and at some institutions, there mayhave been a tendency to transform finding aids into scholarly tomes, butsuch tendencies are now vanishingly rare. Brevity and concision are thehallmarks of historical scholarship as well as archival practice, and avoid-ing verbosity does not mean abandoning a thorough and proper analysis.One can be historically informed and provide meaningful historical, orga-nizational, professional, or cultural context without being verbose, and anysearch through recently produced online finding aids will quickly demon-strate that if archivists have had a problem in description, it is not verbosity.It is instructive to recall that not so long ago funding agencies were excitedto support projects designed to revisit processed collections to expose the“hidden” content relative to women or African Americans—information thatcould easily have been included if finding aids were allowed more room tobreathe. With minimal processing, we are creating a whole new generationof hidden history.
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More than this, finding aids are one of the primary tools for an archiveto market itself, to promote education and spur use, and to solicit support.The manner in which a finding aid is written and the concerns and depth ofknowledge it conveys are clear and highly public expressions of the values ofthe archive itself. A proper finding aid signals to researchers, administrators,and prospective donors alike that the archivist values their presence, is con-versant with their concerns, and is knowledgeable about their subject matter.Finding aids are every bit as important in branding as a logo or exhibit, asprogramming or promotional fliers, and they should be considered amongthe most important means of conveying our intellectual and organizationalcommitments.
We are in fact embedded in an information economy in which theMalthusian limiting factor is not the availability of collections, but researchers.Though seldom discussed in this manner, perhaps for good reason, we arein a peculiar competition for the attention of researchers. Although theyare the lifeblood of our organizations, few researchers are so bound bytheir projects that they are required to use the materials that we “uniquely”hold. Instead, many will shop for information in the intellectual marketplace,doling out research trips based upon a calculus that involves geographicproximity, financial support, density of documentation, and the perceivedquality of both collections and the archival staff, choosing to go where theysense the greatest return on their investment. Most research topics can beframed in such a way that any number of archives can and will be used,and while many researchers will choose to work locally, we should neverbe so shortsighted as to believe that all will do so. Because research projectstypically span geographical, conceptual, or personal borders, because wehave such a rich, varied, and highly distributed historical record in the UnitedStates, and because researchers approach questions from any number ofnovel perspectives, most of us are, as archives, replaceable. To be sure, afew researchers will be committed to projects that require use of particularcollections at particular institutions, but most are flexible enough to use anynumber of sources. Simply put, researchers are adept at finding cheap andcreative ways of skinning the archival cat.
Such considerations are more critical for some institutions than for oth-ers. Not every institution has the same resources in capital or prestige, noteveryone is equal in the eyes of researchers or donors. To put it bluntly,some have more options than others. The prestige that some institutionsenjoy goes a long way to ensuring the pleasure of donors and researchers,many of whom relish the very prospect of their association, but institutionsthat sit lower in the food chain may continue to find it necessary to makeuse of any tool we have in our kit bag to draw and retain researchers andsupport. The less well-heeled among us confront the greatest pressures fromlimitations on staffing, time, and resources (though of course, rich or poor,
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we all have the option of reducing the rate of acquisition, if we so chose),and we have fewer alternatives.
In discussions of minimal processing, there is little argument over whatis necessary for archivists to do, but necessity (as Greene and Meissnerimply) must always be linked to sufficiency, and here the debate lies. Inmaximal processing, we suggest that the equation should be reversed fromthe minimal model: archivists should seek to maximize both the physical andintellectual care of collections (and here is the important part) within the realand practical limits of the resources at their disposal. Our contention is thatsufficiency entails a greater commitment to the content of our work and agreater awareness of the broad impact of our descriptive practices. In thefinal section of this article, I will lay out the basics of the maximal approachto processing. Conceptually, we owe a great deal to Greene and Meissner,and despite some sharp differences, I hope to make clear that we share theirconcern for cost efficiency and fitting the level of treatment to the needs ofthe collection, even as we explore alternative terrains.
MAXIMAL PROCESSING: THE MODEL
Processing is a process, one that is integrated into the broader fabric ofarchival praxis, affected by and affecting nearly every activity in which wetake part. Maximal processing begins with the recognition of what one mightcall the life cycle of description, the sum total of archival interventions intothe physical and intellectual care of a collection beginning at the momentof acquisition. Although the process of processing is continuous, for thesake of clarity we typically speak of three more or less distinct phases: pre-description, description, and post-description.
Consistent with the goals of Greene and Meissner, our first priority whenimplementing the maximal processing model is to provide comprehensiveonline access to our entire holdings, extending rudimentary (or better) intel-lectual control over every collection, “processed” or not. To reach this goalat the University of Massachusetts (UMass), we adopted a variant of the col-lection survey methodology developed by Rachel Onuf and David Moltke-Hansen at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP). The HSP modelinvolves a systematic review of each collection, with the archivist assem-bling or creating standardized collection-level data for each, and assigningpriorities for future processing work based on a standardized formula.16 Fornearly all of us, the survey is a realistically attainable, a practical possibility.The UMass survey was conducted over the course of about eighteen monthsby a single archivist, Danielle Kovacs, who accomplished the work duringthe course of her regular work day. We neither sought, nor received, specialfunding. Her work resulted in comprehensive exposure of our holdings and
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a relatively dramatic rise in use, with several smaller and previously obscurecollections finding an audience along with the old, much-used chestnuts.
In many ways, the survey is akin to minimal processing. During thisstage of the process of processing, we perform only the most basic stabiliza-tion and preservation work (and only when necessary); we do only limitedphysical arrangement; capture only basic information about title, date range,and extent; and we write only a two paragraph abstract providing a broadoverview of the creator and contents, respectively, adding a set of subjectterms drawn from a controlled vocabulary. All of the information collectedmaps directly onto Encoded Archival Description (EAD) elements and all dataconform to professional content standards. The survey is, in other words, themost minimal of minimal processing, done with care, but quickly. The datagenerated—which we call pre-descriptions—are made public through our“catablog” UMarmot (a home-grown online catalog that employs WordPresssoftware as a content management system), as well as our OPAC and OCLC.
Since completing our survey, we have substantially adjusted our pro-cessing workflow. The arrival of a new collection now triggers a miniatureversion of the survey, focused on that single collection, as we collect thesame suite of standardized data for the new arrival. In most (though notall) cases, the process can be expedited: we spend considerable time withmost donors while negotiating for the donation, providing an opportunity tobecome familiar with the basic facts of the collection and the context of itscreation, all with pre-description in mind. Most new collections are conse-quently posted to UMarmot within a week of their arrival unless we makethe conscious decision to delay publicity.
As much as maximal processing may sound like minimal processing,however, there is a crucial difference. In maximal processing, making acollection publicly available is only the first stage in the process of process-ing, not the end—it is a step, not a goal. In maximal mode, it is a falsedichotomy to speak of a conflict between speed of access and depth ofdescription: These represent two distinct phases of a single process. Once acollection has been pre-described, it is set in queue for full processing, itsposition in that queue governed by a host of factors including the time ofarrival, the availability of external support, political considerations, requestsfrom researchers, anticipated use, or potential for marketing. In a few cases,collections are processed rapidly simply because they are as easy to polishoff as they are to set aside.
During full processing, we strive to maximize what we do with respectto appraisal, arrangement, and description, while always keeping a clear eyeon costs. As a rough rule of thumb, we set a goal of processing at a rateof no more than four to five hours per linear foot of material, dependingupon the level of experience of the processor and nature of the material,but whatever rate we achieve, we are, as a relatively poorly funded stateinstitution and markedly understaffed, deeply conscious of the constraints
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on our operation and the many competing demands for our time. Our goalis to facilitate access to the greatest degree possible. It is not simply that wellorganized, beautifully processed collections appeal to researchers, donors,and administrators (though many comment on the fact), and it is not justthat it reflects well on us: Arrangement and description are the keys todiscovery, usability, and serviceability. Accessibility is not a binary, not a yesor no, but rather a continuum that extends from no description to full textavailability, and as maximal processors, our goal is to push our collectionsas far along this spectrum as possible, privileging the benefits that accrue toour researchers over the limitations of our resources.
While we generally arrange collections to the folder level, the realitiesof life sometimes intrude and when we perceive that the cost of arrangementclearly exceeds the benefits, our processors set their sights lower. Where weseldom skimp, however, is in description—the Velcro of the archival world.We place a particular premium upon the meat of the narrative sections ofthe finding aid (the biographical and historical note and scope and con-tent notes), since these are the sections that most enhance the likelihoodof discovery in Internet search engines, the means by which most of ourexternal users find us. As a general practice, our processors have the latitudeto craft the narrative as they think best, tailoring their description to reflectthe content of the collection and to suit the perceived needs of prospectiveresearchers, interpreting the lives or activities of the creators as they judgebest. We rely upon their professional judgment (or budding professionaljudgment, as the case may be) and the knowledge they gain from their aca-demic training and from the materials themselves to frame the collectionmeaningfully, and we rely on them to be conscious of the constraints underwhich we operate, whether historical, architectural, or developmental. Thereare good reasons, as one philosopher of biology put it, that zebras do nothave machine guns—our histories, cultures, and resources constrain what ispossible for us—but the skills and judgment of our professional employeeswill make the most out of what we have.17
Our ideal finding aid is not a scholarly essay, but an essay informedby scholarship, one that speaks reasonably to the current concerns of ourusers and one that places the contents of the collection and the history ofits creation in a context that will permit a wide range of researchers anopportunity to make a well informed decision about whether the collectionwill be of use. Our role as archivists is to serve as translators, rendering thearcana of archival praxis into terms that can be understood in a variety ofresearch modalities and vice versa. As translators, it behooves us to be fluentin the language of researchers as well as our own professional idiom, toappreciate their syntax and grammar and the subtleties of their speech.
The final stage in the life cycle of processing is post-description. How-ever well processed a collection is, however thoroughly described it maybe, it is important to remember that history gathers no moss. In the maximal
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processing model, all levels of description are inherently dynamic and likelyto change as descriptive standards, technology, and historical practice evolve,and so it should be. Just as we revisited our collections a generation ago toreveal hidden content relative to women, and just as many of us revisitedthem again to bring them into conformity with the EAD standard, so too isit likely we will continue to revisit them in the future.
The post-descriptive phase of processing is not, as some would insist,a utopian fantasy. During the past five years at UMass, we have revisiteddozens of collections, intervening to incorporate new information, to correcterrors or inadequacies, to provide updates, and, in some cases, to reprocessimportant (typically underutilized) collections from the ground up. Once weachieved a baseline at which all of our collections were represented online,we discovered that the benefits of providing enhanced access to significantolder collections often outweighed the perceived need to improve accessto newer ones. Choose your motto: “age before beauty” or “old collectionsdon’t die, they don’t even fade away.”
Neither is post-description a free-for-all or a call to revisit our old fa-vorites whenever the whim strikes. The flip side of processual dynamismis that we insist upon the ability to make the strategic decision to freezethe process of processing at any stage. Some collections will almost cer-tainly never receive high-level treatment, and we should acknowledge thereare collections in every archive that are simultaneously worth retaining andsufficiently described by pre-processing. The important thing is that the sta-bility of the descriptive record is, or ought to be, the product of an explicitdecision made by the archivist for concrete reasons, typically (though notexclusively) in recognition of the limitations of resources. Even the rationalefor suspension itself is dynamic. As we race around the track in this newworld of ours, nothing is quite fixed any more.
From this account, it should be clear that our perspective on findingaids differs somewhat from the standard. In addition to our assertion thatfinding aids represent both a marketing opportunity and an expression ofan archive’s highest values, we regard finding aids as necessarily 1) instru-mental, 2) dynamic and perpetually in-process, 3) interpretive, 4) contingent(historically, technically, and professionally), and 5) focused on emergentlevels at which we provide the relevant historical and genetic context (i.e.,information that resides at a level of analysis that may not be strictly reducibleto lower levels of organization).
At every stage, we echo Greene and Meissner in emphasizing the criticalrole that professional judgment ought to play in determining the appropriatelevel of description, in performing the cost/benefit analysis with respect toinstitutional values and institutional capacities, and in determining when andhow to intervene in the process of processing. In maximal processing, how-ever, these activities are part and parcel of a more extensive set of processeswith implications for our entire operation and are geared to enhance the
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potential for efficient discovery and use of our holdings. Our goal is simple,and perhaps naive: to leverage the full weight of our archivists’ experience,judgment, professional skills, subject knowledge, and enthusiasm to maxi-mize the value we add at every stage by producing collections and findingaids that truly facilitate discovery, build knowledge, and fulfill the ethicalresponsibilities to our donors, institutions, and profession.
CONCLUSION
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, pale though it may be, I wish to concludeby returning to Albert Pinkham Ryder for a cautionary coda. Putting the metain the metaphor, Ryder himself, like his paintings, can be seen as a symbol ofthe archival condition. An extraordinarily deliberate man, Ryder worked andreworked his canvases for literally decades, adding detail and texture andadjusting the ground to suit the evolution of his artistic vision. The resultingworks are brilliant evocations of his thought and might be the sorts of thingsthat would do a maximal processor proud. Yet as a consequence of hisobsessive revisitation, the paint on many of Ryder’s canvases has become sothick and encrusted as to destabilize the surface. It is as if his own techniqueand his desire for transcendental permanence has conspired to destroy hisvision.
In adopting a maximal approach, we take Ryder’s lesson to heart andseek to strike a balance between too little and too much, between the recog-nition that even the least of our activities provides long-term opportunitieswith long term consequences. The term maximal processing is intended toframe our activities in terms of our highest aspirations—to provide the max-imum support for our researchers—to emphasize what we can accomplishrather than lament what we cannot. The word minimum is a clarion for ourlimitations and for what we cannot do; maximum shines a light on the goalsto which we aspire. Our desire is to maximize service and access, maximizeuse of our collections, and maximize our professional talents, even as weacknowledge the need to leaven those hopes with the realities of the mun-dane world. We are judged by the value we add to collections, both in howwe aggregate materials and how we describe them, and while the questionmay be partly a matter of semantics; one might ask how one would reactin other contexts to a professional who sought only the minimum. Even themost cost-conscious among us might quail in the hands of an attorney orsurgeon who promised to minimize their effort.
In presenting minimal processing, Greene and Meissner excoriated thearchival profession for being “unwilling or unable to change its processingpractices in response to the greater quantities of acquisitions.”18 With col-lection surveys, minimal processing, and now maximal processing, we haverealistic, road-tested alternatives. In setting the maximum as our goal and
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taking the long view of the process of processing, we hope that archivistswill not find the need to abandon the high standards and specialist knowl-edge that have long been the gold standard of our profession. A sharp eye onthe bottom line should never dampen our hopes and as once again we circlethe theoretical racetrack, let maximal processing remind us of the future thatcan still lie ahead.
NOTES
1. Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, “More Product, Less Process: Revamping TraditionalArchival Processing,” American Archivist 68 (2005): 240.
2. Anne L. Foster, “In Favor of Minimal Standards Processing,” Easy Access 32, no. 2 (2006): 6.3. Greene and Meissner, “More Product, Less Process”; see, e.g., Donna E. McCrea, “Getting More
for Less: Testing a New Processing Model at the University of Montana,” American Archivist 69 (2006):284–290.
4. Greene and Meissner, “More Product, Less Process,” 241.5. Ibid., 246.6. Ibid., 247.7. Matt Gorzalski, “Minimal Processing: Its Context and Influence in the Archival Community,”
Journal of Archival Organization 6, no. 3 (2008): 186–200.8. E.g. McCrea, “Getting More for Less”; Christine Weideman, “Accessioning as Processing,” Amer-
ican Archivist 69 (2006): 274–283.9. Tiah Edmundson-Morton, “Concerns about Minimal Processing,” Easy Access 32, no. 2 (2006):
5–9.10. McCrea, “Getting More for Less.”11. Gorzalski, “Minimal Processing,” 197; see, e.g., Wendy Duff, Barbara Craig, and Joan Cherry,
“Historians’ Use of Archival Sources: Promises and Pitfalls of the Digital Age,” Public Historian 26, no.2 (2004): 7–22; Jacqueline Goggin, “The Indirect Approach: A Study of Scholarly Users of Black andWomen’s Organizational Records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division,” Midwestern Archivist11, no. 1 (1986): 57–67; Catherine A. Johnson and Wendy M. Duff, “Chatting Up the Archivist: SocialCapital and the Archival Researcher,” American Archivist 67 (2004): 113–129; James O’Toole, “Archivesand Accountability: Toward a Moral Theology of Archives,” Archivaria 58 (2004): 18; Christopher Prom,“User Interactions with Electronic Finding Aids in a Controlled Setting,” American Archivist 67 (2004):234–268; Elizabeth Yakel and Deborah A. Torres, “AI: Archival Intelligence and User Expertise,” AmericanArchivist 66 (2003): 51–79.
12. Frederic Miller, “Use, Appraisal, and Research: A Case Study of Social History,” AmericanArchivist 49 (1986): 371–392; Goggin (1986).
13. Miller, “Use Appraisal,” 392.14. In evaluating barriers to access of archival materials, Duff, Craig, and Cherry (“Historians Use”)
discovered that 37% of historians complained that finding aids were insufficiently detailed, while only 2%felt they were too detailed. Another 23% found out-of-date finding aids problematic.
15. Wendy Duff and Catherine A. Johnson, “Where Is the List with All the Names? Information-Seeking Behavior of Genealogists,” American Archivist 68 (2003): 79–95.
16. PACSCL (Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries), PACSCL ConsortialSurvey Initiative (retrieved January 15, 2010). Available at http://www.pacsclsurvey.org/; Emily Epstein,“Masters of All We Survey: Preparation for Cataloging Special Collections,” Technical Services Quarterly13 (1995); William Jordan Patty, “Metadata, Technology, and Processing a Backlog in a University SpecialCollections,” Journal of Archival Organization 6, nos. 1–2 (2008): 102–120.
17. Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2002);Timothy Shanahan, “Why Don’t Zebras Have Machine Guns? Adaptation, Selection, and Constraints inEvolutionary Theory,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C 39 (2008): 135–146; ToddGrantham, “Constraints and Spandrels in Gould’s Structure of Evolutionary Theory,” Biology and Philos-ophy 19 (2004): 29–43.
18. Greene and Meissner “More Product, Less Process,” 211.
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