Documentation Basics:
A Guide to Planning and Managing
Documentation Projects
by John W. Suter
2003
A publication of the New York State Archives (a program of the State Education Department)
and the New York State Historical Records Advisory Board
Publication Number 79
Copyright 2003 State Archives, State Education Department
Why is documentation important?
Why might you undertake documentation work?
SUMMARY of the Documentation Process
Select the Topic, and Plan and Publicize the Project
Select, define, and research the documentation topic
Publicize the documentation effort
Identify Stakeholders and Participants
Work with stakeholders: create an advisory committee
Identify and assign project personnel
Develop and test the survey instrument
Make the information available
Survey follow-up: cultivate future donors of records
Find the Right Home for Historically Valuable Records
For a historical records repository or an institution with its own archives
For an organization without its own archives
Determine Which Records to Save
Appraisal: Decide what to save
Negotiate the donation and transfer of records
Publicize the availability of the records
Keys to a successful documentation project
For More Information and Assistance
Appendix A: New York Documentation Topics Framework (Abridged)
Appendix B: Using a Documentation Guide to Decide What to Collect
Appendix C: Criteria for Prioritizing Topics and Subtopics
Appendix D: Extent and Distribution of Archival Description
Appendix E: Records Management
Appendix F: Sample Forms and Documents
Appendix G: Programs and Services of the New York State Archives
Appendix H: Resources for Documentation in Print and on the Internet
New Yorkers value their heritage. New Yorkers neglect their heritage. Each of these statements is true—and therein lies the challenge.
Diaries of a farm woman, account books from a hardware store, minutes of a local zoning board, an oral interview with a traditional Mohawk basket maker, photos of a Puerto Rican baseball team, and the membership rolls of a Black Baptist church—these are some of the ways New Yorkers preserve their history, their culture, and their collective memory…
More than 2,500 historical societies, libraries, archives, museums, and other organizations in New York State have endeavored to preserve this heritage…Yet many serious issues remain to be addressed. There are significant gaps in our historical documentation, leaving important industries, events, people, cultures, and organizations virtually undocumented, and therefore unknowable for the future…New York’s historical records can and should become an enduring resource for generations to come.
(from Ensuring a Future for Our Past, the ten-year strategic plan for historical records in New York State, published in 1998 by the Governor’s New York State Historical Records Advisory Board)
These lines lay out a challenge for the people and organizations of New York. This manual is part of the State Archives’ answer to that challenge. It is a tool that can help people and organizations think about, plan, and conduct projects that enhance New York’s historical record. Community by community, topic by topic, documentation projects can build a more comprehensive and balanced record of all New York’s peoples and their history.
History starts today!
We tend to think of history as something that stretches back into the past, beginning fifty or a hundred years ago. But history begins each day, each moment. Although historians may not write about today’s events for a few years, the documents on which they will base their accounts are being created every day. Therefore, it is critical that we save our historical legacy right now.
Documentation Basics is written for people in New York who want to learn about the documentation process and how to carry out documentation projects. Most users will fall into two broad groups:
People will bring to this manual varying degrees of knowledge and experience, different perspectives, and diverse needs for information and guidance. Therefore, we urge you to look through the table of contents and go directly to the sections that most interest you. Read the manual straight through if you want the full picture in the order in which we conceived it, or jump around between topics, following your own logic, questions, and trains of thought. You will find a “Glossary of Terms” in Appendix I, beginning on page 73.
Documentation may also involve creating new records to provide context for existing ones or to fill gaps in the historical record. For example, an oral history interview might be recorded to fill in or complete a set of someone’s family papers or an organization’s records. Similarly, photographs of an individual or a building, or a videotape of a community event, may flesh out information on paper, or it may help tell a part of the story that isn’t reflected in the records. Although this manual does not address this aspect of documentation (which cannot be funded by State Archives grants), creating new records might be a component of your project. (Resources on oral history are available on the Web.)" Documentation is the process of identifying, collecting, and making publicly available existing records, such as correspondence, computer files, photographs, etc., that are of enduring historical value. (“Documentation” can also refer to the records themselves—the papers, photographs, etc.—but to avoid confusion, in this manual we use the term only to refer to the process.)
Why is documentation important?
Yet the records of many significant groups and topics are seriously under-represented in New York’s historical records repositories. These include:
Documentation identifies and makes accessible unique records that reveal details of history, evidence that confirms or challenges our beliefs about the past, and narratives and images that bring a human perspective to issues of public policy or large historical events. For example:
Why might you undertake documentation work?
The purpose of documentation is to identify and ensure the systematic preservation of papers and other records that provide information about people, groups, events, and changing political, economic, or social conditions. A documentation project seeks to contribute to the building of a comprehensive and equitable historical record by making unique, original source materials available to researchers and citizens. These materials enable us to better understand the present and to plan more intelligently for the future.
Any organization with an interest in documenting a population group or topic can sponsor a documentation project. The initiative for documentation work generally arises from either repositories that collect records or organizations that generate them.
Historical records repositories
Since the missions of many repositories pertain directly and explicitly to historical records, they are most likely to initiate documentation projects. Repositories range from large educational institutions, corporations, or governments that have archives to small non-profit community organizations. Some examples:
Organizations that generate records
Working with historical records is usually not part of the mission of records-creating organizations, so they are less likely to initiate projects. However, as organizations come to see the historical importance of their accomplishments and the value of preserving their stories, more are becoming active in documentation. Documentation projects may be initiated by
If you represent an organization that generates records that are likely to be historically valuable, your first step might be to contact your Documentary Heritage Program (DHP) Regional Archivist (see “Documentary Heritage Program—Technical Assistance,” page 38). The archivist may be able, through a free consultation, to help you learn about the likely value of your records, the options available for preserving them, and the process of making them available for research. (See also “Find the Right Home for Historically Valuable Records,” page 27).
Partners in documentation
Documentation nearly always involves a partnership between the entity that creates the records and the organization that will care for them and make them available. The partnerships can be initiated and structured in various ways:
When two or more repositories are involved, it is important that they come to agreement regarding which groups of records should go to which repository, based on mission, location, resources, user clientele, or other factors. It is essential that the organization that initiates a project commit the necessary support and encouragement to carry out the project, and that repositories that collect the records commit to their ongoing care and accessibility.
The field of archives and historical records, like other fields, has developed a specialized vocabulary that invests common words with specific technical meanings. You will find a glossary of such terms in Appendix I, beginning on page 73. A few fundamental concepts, however, are central to understanding documentation; these are explained in more detail below.
Record
A record is information in any format created by an organization or received in the formal operation of its responsibilities. The term also includes recorded information created or held by individuals in the course of their daily lives.
Records are found in a wide range of formats, including paper, photographs and slides, motion picture film, audio- and videotape, and computer files.
Records are by-products of what we do as individuals and groups involved in life activities. We create a record to assist with administration, to help us remember something later, to persuade or inform others; we don’t usually create a record to contribute to history. For example:
Historical record
A historical record contains information that will have enduring value. Most historical records are no longer needed for their original purpose, and the person or organization that created them rarely, if ever, needs to consult them. For example, correspondence between the president of an advocacy organization and key legislators discussing the organization’s and legislators’ positions on an upcoming bill was written to influence legislation. A year later, their primary purpose fulfilled, some items may be consulted only occasionally. In a few years, the correspondence may be forgotten altogether, but it may have long-term historical significance and be worth saving. (For more information, see “Determine Which Records to Save” on page 29). Some records, however, are both permanently active and historical (for example, an organization’s articles of incorporation or charter, which will be needed periodically throughout the life of the organization).
Note: Most records (the usual estimate is 95%) are not historically valuable. You can schedule these for recycling when they are no longer needed (see Appendix E, “Records Management,” page 46, for more information).
Many kinds of records may have important historical value:
Three-dimensional artifacts may also tell important parts of the story, and much of the information in this manual will be useful to those planning to collect such objects. Our focus, however, is archival documentation. Organizations in New York State that are committed to collecting artifacts may want to consult with one of the following organizations or other museum professionals for guidance: Museum Association of New York State Lower Hudson Conference of Historical Agencies Upstate History Alliance Western New York Alliance of Historical Associations (For contact information, see www.nysmuseums.org.)
Groups of records: archives, manuscripts, series
Archives (the records of an organization) and manuscripts (generally the papers of an individual or family) are most commonly and most appropriately managed and described at an aggregate level. That is, they are kept and described in the same groupings that were created by the person or organization responsible for the records. Sometimes, when the group of organizational archives or personal papers is small or homogeneous enough, a single description of the records as a whole will suffice. Larger or more diverse groups of organizational records and manuscripts, however, are described based on the groupings, or series, created by the organization or individual. The records of a business or organization—an arts organization, for example—might contain several series, such as newsletters, program files, board minutes, annual reports, personnel records, financial records, and so on. Similarly, the papers of an individual, also referred to as a manuscript group, might contain series containing personal correspondence, diaries, journals, or unpublished writings, files related to organizations in which the person was active, and so on.
SUMMARY of the Documentation Process
Now we move from learning what documentation is, who is involved in it, why it is important, and some central concepts, to a discussion of the process itself—how to carry out the work of documentation. The table below summarizes the steps involved. They are described in detail in the sections that follow.
| The Documentation Process at a Glance |
|---|
|
Select the Topic, Plan and Publicize the Project
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Identify Stakeholders and Participants
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Survey the Records
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Find the Right Homes For Historically Valuable Records
|
Determine Which Records to Save
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Make the Records Available
|
Select the Topic, Plan and Publicize the Project
Select, define, and research the documentation topic
The first step in documentation is to identify a potential group or topic and find the answers to several questions about the topic:
Collecting Policy Every archives, historical society, museum, or other organization that collects historical records should have an acquisitions or collecting policy. An effective policy will state explicitly and in detail the topics that are the focus of collecting, so that the archivist or curator has a basis upon which to make decisions regarding what to accept and what not to accept, what to seek out and what to ignore. (For more information and sample acquisition policies, see Strengthening New York’s Historical Records Programs: A Self-Study Guide listed in Appendix H under “Publications in Print.”)
The following steps will help you answer these questions:
Planning for a documentation project is an ongoing process, because the details of each phase of the project depend on the results of the previous phase. The planning process began when you first sat down to talk about documentation with a colleague or two and jotted down some ideas. It probably took formal written form for the first time as a grant proposal for funding or a presentation to a director or board of directors. It would have included at least an introduction to the topic, a basic outline of the documentation process, and a rudimentary work plan—perhaps with this manual as your guide. But depending on your degree of familiarity with the topic, the organizations and individuals active in it, and the kinds and quantities of relevant records that may exist, this first plan may contain little detail and leave lots of questions unanswered.
For more detailed guidance in planning your documentation efforts, see A Manual for Documentation Planning in New York State, available from the State Archives. Although its focus is on planning for documentation at the statewide and regional levels, much of the information is applicable to local documentation projects. The State Archives has also published guides to documentation in the areas of mental health, environmental affairs, and Latino/ Hispanic history and culture. If your topic is related to one of these areas, be sure to obtain the relevant guide. (See “Resources for Documenta-tion in Print and on the Internet,” Appendix H, page 69.)
At this point you have identified, researched, and refined your topic, and you have consulted, at least informally, with knowledgeable people. You may have begun to develop a contact list and establish relationships with important stakeholders. You should now be in a position to develop a more complete and realistic project plan. This manual describes the basic elements of the documentation process (summarized in the table on page 9) and raises some of the issues and decisions that you will need to consider along the way. You may now be able to determine some parts of the plan in detail; others will require fleshing out or revision as the project unfolds.
The elements of the documentation process are presented in this manual in logical order, but they are not always carried out in strictly chronological order. For example, your repository may already be working with an organization whose records you would like to collect, at the same time that you are defining your topic. Similarly, your community organization, which intends to document the community’s history, may be negotiating with potential repositories before you have even begun to identify the organizations and individuals that may have records to donate. In fact, you may need to do preliminary work on all the elements to sell the project to your agency, your partners, or your funders.
Components of the plan (See “Sample Project Plan,” Appendix F, page 47.)
The project plan has several components. Depending on when during the project the plan is written, some of these components may be fully developed, while others may be only projections. They include:
Organize the project into manageable phases
Documentation is a process that begins with selecting a topic and ends when records have been preserved and made available to the public for use. As you will see, a documentation project entails careful planning and a number of steps, many of which involve building relationships with stakeholders and gaining their trust and active participation. The process often takes more time than one might expect. If the organization conducting the project already has extensive contacts and relationships with the main stakeholders in the topic area, the process may move quickly. If the topic is broad, the number of potential records holders is large, and the stakeholder community is new to the lead organization, the process may take significantly longer. For an organization new to documentation or new to the topic area, it often works best to select a narrow topic and expand it later if time and resources permit.
For example, as a general rule, allow at least two years for a survey project. It is always a good idea to conceive and organize the project into manageable segments or phases. The following outline offers a typical and recommended approach:
Publicize the documentation effort
Documentation work is important, but very few people even know that the process exists. Publicizing your documentation efforts well is an important part of the project and can further several important goals:
There are many ways to draw public attention to your project, several of which overlap with the activities involved in building your contact list (see page 17). The list below begins with common steps that announce your project to a broad public audience. Your advisory committee may be able to provide names of organizations, newsletters, radio stations, etc. used by your target group, and they may know other ways to spread the word.
Remember that publicity is not something you undertake once in a project. It should be an ongoing aspect of the work, marking milestones in the project, reaching new stakeholders, and keeping the public and your stakeholder groups aware of what you’re doing so they stay interested and supportive.
Identify Stakeholders and Participants
Work with stakeholders: create an advisory committee
A successful documentation project depends on the active engagement of stakeholders—the range of people and groups to whom the project and its outcome will matter. The advisory committee is the most important vehicle of such engagement.
The ultimate goal of the documentation project is to make historically valuable records about your topic available to people for use. This means that many people who have a stake in the topic and may have devoted their lives to it will have to give up, often to another organization and to public view, records that are very important to them.
If your topic is a population group, say the Latino communities in your county, a major stakeholder group will be members of those communities and should represent the range of constituencies within them. Other stakeholders will include scholars, policy makers, businesses, health and social services agencies, cultural organizations, and others that serve or interact with the Latino community. If the topic is defined by a subject or kind of activity—for example, the arts, or business, or mental health— the stakeholders will include experts in the topic, people working in the organizations associated with it, the people served by the organizations, people who make or influence policy in the area, and so on.
Be sensitive to community issues and community dynamics
It is important to remember that any community of stakeholders is really several communities—sub-groups, factions, or constituencies—which may have complex relationships among themselves. If the staff carrying out the documentation project are not members of that community or are not privy to its subdivisions and internal dynamics, they will need guidance from people who are. Moreover, the quest for a balanced historical record entails a conscientious effort to document the internal diversity of communities—both significant sub-groups and contrasting viewpoints.
Equally important, the stakeholder community will likely share values, concerns, customs, distinctive language, and ways of looking at the world, or at least at the topic, of which an outsider may not be aware. Identifying a few people from the stakeholder community who can guide you through these cultural, social, and political thickets can help the project go smoothly and avoid pitfalls.
Who should serve on your advisory committee?
The advisory committee needs to be large enough to include people who represent and can provide entrée into the key stakeholder communities, but it should not be too large to work effectively as a group. Eight to fifteen people is a good size. It should include people knowledgeable about the topic, its current dynamics and history, and archives. The committee can include
Be sure to discuss with potential advisory committee members the nature of their roles and how much of their time you expect their work will take.
What does the advisory committee do?
The advisory committee should meet regularly throughout the project to
Identify and assign project personnel
The advisory committee is important, but most members will be volunteers, and you can’t expect them to do the bulk of the work. You will need staff, including
Project director
The project director should be familiar with the topic or group being documented and be responsible for
Project archivist
The project archivist provides the records expertise and must work closely with the project director and advisory committee, particularly if he or she is not a member of the community being surveyed. When selecting the archivist:
The DHP office at the State Archives has a list of archival consultants who have experience with documentation projects.
Other staff
You may also need a community liaison, a translator or interpreter, survey workers, and/or clerical support.
The purpose of the project contact list is twofold:
Kinds of data to include in the contact list
Depending on your topic, you will want to think carefully about what kinds of information to collect about the people and organizations in your contact list, such as:
How to develop the list
You will be looking for individuals and organizations who are or have been involved in the topic or group being documented and have generated records, some of which are likely to have historical value. The research already done will have given you a sense of the overall history of the topic and some of the key players in that history.
Some of the steps suggested below will be more relevant than others, depending on your topic. As you go through this process, you will not only build the list; you will also publicize the project to people who are likely to care about it, and you will learn more about the topic itself and about the stakeholder communities.
Developing the contact list will probably begin informally. In your very first meetings, as you develop your topical focus, names of important organizations and individuals will come up in conversation. If your topic is narrow and the region is small, the contact list may be relatively short and obviously complete early in the project. If the topic is broad or the area large, the list may grow as you build your advisory committee. The resulting list can become an important asset to your organization for years to come.
Prioritize contacts: how much effort you expend to reach them
As you review your contact list, certain organizations and individuals are likely to stand out as particularly important. They may include the largest, oldest, or best-known organizations in the topic area. There may be an individual or group that is known to have exercised special leadership or was active during a seminal or critical event in the history of the topic. You may know of an organization that has kept particularly complete records. There may be a segment of the stakeholder community that is considered particularly significant historically or likely to be responsive to historical records issues. You may wish to make a special effort to reach these constituents through personal calls, site visits, follow-up calls, or invitations to visit your repository.
On the other hand, there may be other groups of stakeholders who you think may have some interest or relevant records but who may not warrant as much energy or attention. Some of these who receive the survey will respond with enthusiasm, others won’t. For these lower-priority constituents, it will be the recipients’ interest and initiative that determine the outcome.
Thus it is wise to prioritize your contact list and allocate your time and resources where you think they will be most productive.
The purpose of a survey is to locate records that are related to the topic of the project, learn basic information about them, and determine whether they have long-term historical value (whether they are archival).
By now you have identified, researched, and refined your topic, and formed an advisory committee. You have developed your contact list and established relationships, recruited and hired some or all of your staff, and begun to publicize the project. Before you launch the survey itself, it is important to summarize what you have learned and decided so far, think through in detail how you are going to carry out the survey, and draft a plan of work for this next phase. (See “Sample Survey Work Plan,” Appendix F, page 49.)
The work plan has several components. They include:
Current status of the project
Survey work plan
Considerations in developing your survey plan
Your capacity
The research and planning you have completed may have generated a potential project that is beyond the capacity of your organization and its resources. The survey plan needs to be created within a realistic context and set realistic goals.
Prioritize the survey: how in-depth should your survey of each group of records be?
For most organizations and individuals identified in the survey, a single survey form can be filled out for the whole grouping of records, from which the archivist can write a group-level description. If the group of records is particularly large, varied, or important enough, it may make sense to survey them in greater depth than is usually required. The person or organization holding the records may be able to do this with some advice from the archivist, but it’s more likely that the project archivist or a records surveyor on the project will need to make a site visit and survey the records in person.
You will probably not know before the initial survey forms are disseminated how many or which groups of records should receive this deeper level of survey, but advisory committee members may be able to identify some likely candidates. In any case, it is wise to budget time and funds to allow for some site visits for more in-depth surveying of especially important groups of records.
Timing
The timing of the project itself and of individual contacts can affect the success of the survey. If the main stakeholder group consists of organizations with regular business hours, then weekday meetings during working hours will be fine. However, if the topic is labor or an ethnic community in a city, for example, then many key leaders might not be able to take time off from day jobs, and you will have to schedule calls and meetings for evenings or weekends. If your target population includes many teachers or others tied to the academic calendar, you may want to time the project to avoid extremely busy periods or vacations. Religious or occupational groups may have similar calendar issues to consider.
Involve community members in the survey team
Members of some communities and groups may be reluctant to talk freely with outsiders, especially about matters related to their history or about records that might be considered sensitive. It is often important, therefore, to include members of such groups on the team that makes calls and conducts site visits. A community scholar or survey worker drawn from the community can be very helpful in this role, as can members of the advisory committee. During a site visit, the community member can visit with organizational representatives while the project archivist is surveying the records. It can be particularly helpful if someone involved in the project knows the contact personally and can facilitate communication.
Public accessibility of historical records
In planning the survey, especially the allocation of resources to fill out survey forms and write the archival descriptions, remember to give priority to records that the current owner wants to make publicly accessible for research. If an individual or an organization with valuable records is ready to donate the records to a repository or to create its own accessible repository, those records should be at the top of the list. If an organization isn’t “ready” yet, but understands the importance of accessibility and is considering donation at a later time, it’s certainly worth doing the survey. But if an individual intends to keep his or her records in private hands and to withhold them for the foreseeable future, it helps to know the records exist, but it does not make sense to devote scarce resources to surveying and describing them.
An important product of the survey project will be descriptions of the groups of records, following standard archival descriptive practices (see “Standardized Description” on page 25 and Appendix F, “Sample Forms and Documents,” page 47.) The extent of description done for a group of records should depend on the degree to which the owners are willing to make the records, and information about them, publicly accessible. For guidelines on making these decisions, see “Extent and Distribution of Archival Description,” (Appendix D, page 45.)
Even if records will remain in the current owner’s possession and information about them will not be publicly accessible, it is important to know that records of historical value exist. The organization conducting the documentation project can maintain contact with the records’ owners, and over time the owners may change their minds about allowing access. Cultivation of a potential donor of records can take years of patient contact, and knowing the records exist and where they are located is the necessary first step. However, given the importance of documenting historical records that can be made publicly accessible, funding agencies, such as the State Archives, will not support efforts to identify and describe records that won’t be made available within the foreseeable future.
Allow plenty of time
If you have done a thorough job working with your advisory committee, developing relationships with key stakeholders in the community, building your contact list, and publicizing the project, you should have a firm foundation for a successful survey. Even so, the process may take longer than you expect. You are asking people who are deeply engaged with a topic to tell you about the records related to the topic and about their involvement with them. You may be asking individuals to let allow or other project personnel to look through the records; in the long run, you are asking those individuals to donate their records to a publicly accessible repository. This requires a high degree of trust and confidence in the people surveying the records, in the organization directing the project, and especially in the repository that may eventually hold the records. Building such trust and confidence can take time. Conducting the survey can easily take a year, perhaps two or three years for a broad topic and many contacts. Survey forms may trickle in, sometimes followed by donated records, for several years after the formal end of the project.
Develop and test the survey instrument
This form is developed, usually by the project archivist, to gather significant details about groups of records held by organizations and individuals. Members of the advisory committee may also provide valuable input during the design of the instrument. (Sample documentation survey forms are included in Appendix F, on page 52.)
The survey form needs to be simple, easy to understand, and presented in a manner and through a medium with which members of the target audience are likely to be comfortable.
Major components of the survey form:
The structure the survey form will take depends in part on how the survey will be conducted—through one or a combination of the following media:
The way you conduct your survey is important and may strongly influence the results. For example, if your topic points you toward organizations that are likely to see the value of their history and therefore the value of your project, a mailed or e-mailed survey form with a cover letter may be quite adequate to produce a good response. At the other end of the spectrum, if your project wants to document the founding and evolution of an ethnic community in your county that includes recent immigrant populations, a mailed survey form with a cover letter in English will be unlikely to stimulate a positive response. You will need bilingual language forms, and you may need a member of the community to make initial phone calls and accompany the archivist on site visits. The design of the form and its medium of delivery need to be carefully thought out for each topic. Several factors should be taken into account:
Your advisory committee should be able to help you think through these issues.
It is important to test the form and its medium of delivery with a random or selected sample of project contacts during the planning phase. The testing phase can yield important feedback about the design of the form and the way it is delivered. For example, you may discover that a segment of people surveyed are uncomfortable talking on the phone, and that site visits might be more successful. Another segment may not want to take the time for a phone call or a visit but would be willing to complete a survey via e-mail. Be sure to test the survey process early enough to leave time for any necessary revisions.
Make initial contacts, explain the project, and disseminate the survey
In some instances, it may be possible to simply write a cover letter to accompany the survey form and send it out to the people on the contact list. But in most situations, it will work better to begin with a more focused, personal approach—a telephone call, an e-mail exchange, a group meeting—that allows the targeted individuals to hear directly about the project, ask questions, and agree to participate. It may be that different stakeholder groups within the contact list will need to be approached differently.
The advisory committee may be able to offer helpful advice in this area, and your experience testing the survey form may have provided valuable clues as to which approaches work best. In any case, the first step is to get the survey into the hands of people likely to have important historical records.
Often the people you contact may be surprised that you are interested in their papers and records, and it may be necessary to raise their awareness and interest as well. Try to indicate how important their papers may be and how they may reveal the organization’s or individual’s contributions to the history of the region and the state.
Be sure to discuss the question of accessibility with the records creators. They need to understand that the descriptions of the records, based on their survey forms, may become publicly available in print, on the web, and in online databases. The survey forms should include a field where the owner grants permission to make information about the records publicly available. (See “Public Accessibility of Historical Records,” page 21.)
Follow up with contacts to encourage participation
Most people lead busy lives, and dealing with the potentially valuable historical records they have lying around is unlikely to be at the top of their agenda. Therefore, if you are using a mailed survey, following up after people have received their survey forms may be an essential step in getting them to participate. A mail or e-mail reminder may work for some, but a phone call or visit is usually better.
Assist or participate in surveying records
People willing to participate in the survey may nevertheless be uncomfortable with the process and need some help. Project staff may be able to assist in several ways:
Rather than fill out the survey form directly, the surveyor may choose to take notes on the records first, then fill out the form based on the notes. (See “Sample survey form (filled out),” Appendix F, page 54.)
Offer advice on the care and retention of records
Some individuals and organizations may wish to retain and care for their own records—if not forever, at least for an extended period. You can help them by providing guidance on how to care for their records and by directing them to publications and resources for supplies. (See Appendix E, “Records Management,” page 46, and other State Archives’ resources on the topic, Appendix H, page 69.) Be sensitive to the fact that some records creators are more at ease with oral than written communication. You also may be able to guide them through the process of deciding whether to manage their own records or place them with a different organization or historical records repository.
Collect completed surveys
Depending on the size and scope of the survey and the characteristics of the groups surveyed, collecting the surveys may require some encouragement and reminders. You will need to set a deadline so you can move on to the next phase of the project. It is likely, however, that surveys will continue to come in after the deadline, perhaps for years to come. Since documentation is an ongoing process with a continuing commitment by the repository, these new survey forms can be integrated into your existing data and may alert you to important records available for collection.
It is not possible to collect everything that might be of possible interest in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the likely historical value of records—to appraise them—before they become part of an archives’ holdings. Most appraisal takes place later in the documentation process (see “Determine Which Records to Save,” page 29), but it is important to make a preliminary assessment of the historical value of each group of records identified in a survey before making information about them available or deciding on the next steps. It may become clear during the survey process that some organizations contacted do not have historical records relevant to the topic, and thus there is no point in pursuing the relationship beyond a gracious letter or call to thank them for their participation. On the other hand, you may discover a group of organizational records or personal papers of unexpected size or significance that requires a more in-depth look by the archivist. The project may also identify significant records that are in immediate danger—stored in damaging conditions or at risk of being discarded.
Once the surveys are in hand or enough of them to begin assessing them:
Make the information available
Write archival descriptions based on the surveys
Once the surveys have been completed and collected and the project archivist has determined that certain records appear to be archival, he or she will write a description of each organization’s records or individual’s papers (“archival” means records that probably have historical value). There will usually be one description for each respondent to the survey. The description will relate, in general terms, what the group of records or manuscripts is about. In some cases, a site visit or a thorough survey form may reveal enough information to warrant writing a description for each records series held by the organization or individual, depending on the quantity of records, their importance, and your resources.
Standardized Description Descriptions should follow standard archival practice. A formal archival description contains numerical codes and a very specific format, but this degree of detail may not be necessary in creating the descriptive records from a survey project. The most important elements are that the right kinds of information are grouped together and in the right order, so that later on an archivist can enter the data into a standard format. (See “Description,” page 34, and “Sample Archival Summary Description Records” in Appendix F, beginning on page 58. For detailed information, see the State Archives publication Guidelines for Arrangement and Description of Archives and Manuscripts.)
Copies of the descriptive records should be sent to the State Archives where staff will add them to the New York State Historical Documents Inventory (HDI), an online resource available through Excelsior, the online catalog of the State Archives (www.archives.nysed.gov).
Privacy and Contact Information The archivist and project director will need to be careful about privacy and contact information. If records creators are keeping their records, make sure you have their written permission in advance to publicly describe their records, and make sure they agree to be contacted, directly or through you, by researchers interested in looking at their records. The description should clearly state any restrictions on access to the records and whom potential researchers should contact first.
Guides to Groups of Records and Manuscripts The project may include publication of guides to the records and manuscript groups surveyed—compilations of the archival descriptions—in printed form or on the Web.
It is important at the end of the project to prepare a final report or evaluation that:
Such a report may be required by the project’s funding agency, the organization’s director or board, or other interested parties. It can also be an important management and planning tool, and it can become, itself, a valuable historical record of an important project.
A successful survey project should yield the following outcomes:
See also “Products at the End of the Documentation Process,” page 35).
Survey follow-up: cultivate future donors of records
The documentation survey begins ongoing relationships between the repository and the organizations and individuals who have created the surveyed records. Some records creators may donate records to the repository, as a direct result of the project. These may be from an earlier period in the organization’s history, but if the organization or individual is still active in the field, they are probably generating new archival records regularly in the course of their work. If so, it might make sense for them to periodically donate records they no longer need to the repository.
Some people or organizations will keep their records—for now. But as individuals and organizations age and records pile up and become candidates for disposal, people may change their minds and later agree to part with records that document their history and their contributions to the field of activity. An occasional friendly follow-up call from the repository to such holders of records can keep the relationship alive and remind people about their records. When circumstances change—a move from an office or home, a change of organizational leadership, aging, or simply the desire to clean house—they may be ready to donate their records or to will them to the repository.
Cultivating such relationships can benefit the repository and donors or potential donors in other ways as well. People may choose to become engaged with the repository as users of records, volunteers, members, or financial supporters. Few organizations will have the time or resources to follow up consistently with all participants in a survey project, but a selective relationship-building program can reap important benefits for the repository—and for the historical record in New York.
Find the Right Home for Historically Valuable Records
A survey project may turn up quantities of important records, held by a number of organizations and individuals, for which you need to find an appropriate repository. Or you may represent an organization that has generated historically significant records, and you need to figure out where and how to save them and make them available. Depending on the kind of organization you represent, its mission and resources, and the kinds and quantity of records you have identified, there are several options to consider.
For a historical records repository or an institution with its own archives
Options
Considerations
For an organization without its own archives
Options
What it takes to properly manage historical records
The whole purpose of documentation is to make archival records available in perpetuity for use by researchers and the public.
For detailed information on the management of archives, see Strengthening New York’s Historical Records Programs: A Self-Study Guide. The State Archives also publishes technical manuals on various aspects of archives management. The complete list of State Archives publications is available on its website.
In short, there is more to establishing an archives than putting records in a room or on the Web. Consider carefully the immediate and long-term expenses of starting a repository. The State Archives and the DHP Regional Archivists have publications and offer workshops covering these topics. They may also be able to provide one-on-one assistance.
Considerations
Determine Which Records to Save
Appraisal: Decide what to save
Having surveyed the records, you’ve laid the foundation for appraisal. You know that the topic is important and why it needs to be documented; you know what has already been documented; you have identified records that are likely to be historically significant; and you have determined that at least some of those records are likely to be appropriate for your repository. The next step is appraisal.
What follows is a brief outline of the process of appraising records for historical value. Its purpose is not to teach someone how to do appraisal; rather, it should help others involved in the project understand what the archivist and the subject expert conducting an appraisal are doing. (The New York State Archives offers workshops and publications on appraisal. These and other resources are listed in Appendices G and H, beginning on page 64.)
Engage a qualified archivist for appraisal
Repositories cannot afford to collect everything that might be interesting or useful someday, so thoughtful, careful, and sometimes difficult choices must be made. Appraisal—deciding which records to collect in your repository—is a complex process that requires knowledge and judgment; there is no simple formula. Personal and institutional priorities and preferences, current historical and cultural values, and the intellectual and conceptual frameworks of those conducting the appraisal inevitably shape such decisions. An archivist trained in history or working with a historian, for example, will ask certain questions of the material and will value certain materials more highly than others. If the archivist works on the same material with an expert in the subject, a different set of questions will arise, and some different judgments are likely to be made as to which materials will be kept or rejected. Appraisal should be done by a trained archivist working closely with people who are familiar with the topic and the records. Both archival skill and the knowledge of the subject are essential.
Understand the repository
Appraisal is not about deciding which records have historical value to all people in all places. Rather, it entails deciding which records that have historical value are appropriate for a particular repository.
Guidelines to archival value
Archivists have developed guidelines that make the appraisal process more objective and give a standard structure to the inquiry. In general, they look for records that should be kept permanently because they have
Ask questions about the records
Now the archivist is ready to ask questions about the records and make decisions based on the answers. She or he will assess the records as manuscript groups or series, not as individual items.
Make decisions based on the answers
Some factors may weigh more heavily than others, and most groups of records will have a mixture of characteristics, some of which argue for saving them in this repository, others for disposing of them or finding a more appropriate repository.
Negotiate the donation and transfer of records
If the documentation effort will result in records being moved to a repository, then you must negotiate the terms of agreement governing ownership of the records and their intellectual content. As a rule, repositories cannot invest precious time, money, and space to process and make available records they do not own, so they will generally not accept records on loan or deposit. Therefore, the donation of records to a repository involves a change of legal ownership. It is essential that the donor, whether an individual or an organization, and the repository reach a clear and explicit agreement on terms of the donation based on a shared understanding of the wishes of the donor and the repository’s mission, policies, and procedures relevant to the records. This agreement will be expressed in a deed of gift.
Deed of gift
The deed of gift is a formal, legal agreement that transfers ownership of the materials being donated and specifies the legal rights of each party to the materials and the information contained in them. It usually includes the following elements:
(The above information is borrowed in part from Deeds of Gift: What Donors Should Know, an online publication of the Society of American Archivists. See the “Sample Deed of Gift” in Appendix F, page 64, and Appendix H, “Resources for Documentation in Print and on the Internet,” page 69, for this and other SAA online publications.)
Once the repository has received the records, its staff should prepare to arrange and describe them so that users can gain access to them. Arrangement and description of archival records requires technical training and experience and should be done by a trained archivist.
The first step, arrangement, is to organize the boxes and folders into an order that allows access. Archival records that come from institutions or organizations often have an existing arrangement based on the way they were filed and used before coming to the repository. Such records may need very little arrangement by the archivist. Manuscript groups donated by an individual often lack a clear structure and may require more work to put them in a usable order. Arrangement follows the two key principles of provenance and original order.
Provenance
Records should be kept together on the basis of who created them. One of the fundamental principles of archives, provenance reveals important information about the context within which the records were created. The context influences the content of the records and can reveal attitudes reflected in them. For example, the body of records of an environmental organization opposing a power plant siting would be very different from those of the utility that proposed the power plant, and from those of the regulating authority dealing with the same issue; but the context of the records as a whole could shed important light on the meaning and significance of particular records. Therefore, groups of records from a single source should not be broken up among different repositories, nor should they be rearranged on the basis of subject, chronological period, or some other classification scheme unless their provenance cannot be determined.
Original order
Series or other groups of records should be kept in their original order. Maintaining records in the order in which the donor kept them preserves important information about why records were created and how they were used. Do not rearrange records according to subject, form, time period, or any other category that makes sense to you (unless they are in no discernible order to begin with). If the records are in disarray, the archivist should develop a clear plan for arrangement that tries to recapture the probable original order or that reflects the work or activities of the person or organization.
Archival description provides information about the physical characteristics of a group of records, its intellectual contents (the information in the records), and the context within which the records were created. Archival description follows a professional standard that archivists have developed over the years for making information about archival records easily accessible worldwide. When information about records is organized the same way in archives across the country, it can be distributed through online information databases and websites, making it much easier for researchers to locate the information they seek as they move among archives. Archival description generally proceeds by these five main steps:
(To describe records, follow the procedures in the State Archives publication Guidelines for Arrangement and Description of Archives and Manuscripts.)
Finding aids
Archival descriptions serve as the basis for the creation of finding aids in printed or electronic form that
Publicize the availability of the records
Once a repository has arranged and described the records and created finding aids, the documentation process for those particular records is complete, and they are ready for use.
The final step is to make sure potential users of the records find out that they are in the repository and available. If the new records represent a change in the repository’s collecting focus, if they are the first records on this topic, or if they are likely to be of interest to a group of stakeholders that is new to the repository, then it is especially important to get the word out.
You may use the same methods outlined in the discussion of publicizing a survey project (See “Publicize the Documentation Effort,” page 14) as well as methods that are only possible when you have the records in hand. For example:
A successful documentation process should yield important products of lasting value and generate other but valuable outcomes that benefit the organizations and individuals directly involved, the various stakeholder communities related to the topic, and the historical record of New York State.
Keys to a successful documentation project
The repository
The documentation process builds relationships with stakeholder communities, especially the people and organizations who create records. Some of these will donate records during a documentation project; some may not be ready to donate records to a repository or even pay significant attention to the care of the records they hold. Still others may learn of the project after it is over and be receptive to donating records to the repository. Successful documentation entails sustaining the promising relationships begun or enhanced during a documentation project. It is particularly important to
The records creator or donor
Once the relationship with a repository is established and the documentation effort has been launched, it’s not hard to keep it going. The documentation project sets up the system, educates the records creators about repositories and how they work, educates the repository about the topic and the stakeholder groups and organizations, and results in the donation of some records to the repository.
The documentation process as set forth in this manual is, at first glance, ab