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ARCHIVAL THEORY AND PRACTICE
Lecture notes by Todd Ellison. Copyright Todd Ellison 2015. Permission is granted for use, but not for sale or any commercial or monetary gain, and you must link to this website. |
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6th section of this course
XI. Researcher access to documentary sources
#6
Reference service and access
are your passport to real success.
Correctly provided,
the public's invited
to use now what once was a mess.
A. Definitions of access and reference service
1. access = who can see the materials, under what circumstances?
a. what may a user see
b. and what may a user not see?
2. reference
a. (Chalou, p. 257 in Reader) = process of making info in the holdings of a repository available
b. convergence of 3 elements (Chalou article), each of which must be prepared:
(1) researcher
(2) records
(3) staff
B. Characteristics of records as regards access
1. information is a commodity
George Brown, Congressman from 26th District, CA, quoted in March 1991 newsletter of The Commission on Preservation and Access: "Information is one of the very few commodities which has the characteristic of being taken or sold, but without diminishing the resources of the original owner."
2. variety of info in an archives is demanding
"Archivists are called upon to manage materials created by every possible discipline or activity and to provide them for questioners from every conceivable background. The knowledge base required to support this activity must include an understanding of the archivist's role as an intermediary in an information exchange, an appreciation of the peculiar nature of information/media, and recognition of the wide assortment of problem-solving approaches...employed by users." (Fred Stielow in Winter 1991 American Archivist, p. 21)
3. three kinds of materials in the typical archives:
a. archives of the institution of which the repository is a part;
(1) distinctions between public and private archives here
(2) divergence in objectives, audiences
(3) a public archives does not pass judgements on researchers' motives, so long as the researchers are not harming the materials; test of admission is the need to know; admit everyone who needs to use these materials to answer their reference questions
b. archives of another institution
c. personal papers
4. categories b & c are received by deed, transfer, donation, purchase; instrument of transaction decides the access
a. each comes in with different access restrictions
(1) private institutions usually have legal title to the records they create
(a) they usually establish their own terms of access
(b) with the exception of legal requirements that certain types of records be made available (e.g., if received federal funds, even if not a federal institution)
(2) government has laws that apply to its records
(a) property laws, laws of replevin, records statutes, freedom of information, privacy acts
(b) but the laws are different at federal, state and local levels
(c) access requirements can come from any of these levels, by statutes, regulations, or developing case law (=how judges are deciding these sorts of cases)
C. Restrictions may be imposed by the donor or by the repository
1. reasons to impose restrictions:
a. to protect the reputations of living persons
(1) unless they're in the public sphere
-celebrities have chosen a more vulnerable role in society than private individuals
(2) example of census records, released after 72 years (1920 census just out March 2, 1992)
b. to protect the records
2. limitations
a. "need to know"
(1) most institutions limit access to what they consider legitimate reference service
(2) archival holdings are not to be used for general info available in published works at a library
b. other common restrictions
(1) the right to consult, to copy and to publish
(2) either because these restrictions were imposed by their creators or through legislation protecting rights of privacy and property (copyright)
(3) curtail access by someone who has violated stated user procedures (theft, carelessness...)
(4) statutory restrictions, agency/institutional restrictions
(5) archivists try to minimize donor restrictions
(a) never accept a forever closed collection
(b) always have a deadline for restricted access
c. unwritten restrictions
"the ability of researchers to locate and consult archival holdings, however, is more frequently limited by 'unwritten' restrictions arising from inadequate arrangement or lack of detailed identification and description, the fragile condition of many documents and the delays inherent in conservation treatment methods, obscure terminology and subtle intimidation by certain concepts." (The Archivist, Nov.-Dec. 1984, p.1) (assigned reading, this article by Patricia Kennedy)
d. preservation vs. access
(1) agree or disagree? (Chalou) "proper preservation of records...must take precedence over the needs of researchers?"
(2) should an unprocessed collection be made available?
3. attorney David Weinstein's comments on copyright etc.
a. until the law was changed, the standard term of copyright was 28 years per term for 2 terms, "but because Congress kept extending the term while they futzed around with copyright law, the second term was extended to a max of 47 years. Hence if it is published and is more than 75 years old, it is in the public domain. See Circular R15a, Duration of Copyright, from the Copyright Office." (per email from Peter Hirtle, NLM, 23-Jun-1992)
b. the Copyright Office has a query hotline: 202/479-0700. A specialist there can give you up-to- date info and send you a series of free handy fliers on fair use and other commonly perplexing issues
4. equal access policy
a. primary policy of reference service
b. must apply access limitations consistently to all researchers
c. this is an ideal, never 100% possible even at public institutions
d. example of a departed professor's litigation research files, which he wanted to be open only to students
D. Relationship of researcher access to archival theories of provenenance (Pugh article in Reader p. 264)
1. different arrangement of library and archive materials
a. subject vs. provenance
b. abstract vs. organic
2. archival reference assumes interaction between user and archivist
a. archivist mediates the guides
b. should staffing at a large repository be by subject specialization or by functional specialization?
3. how personalize should/can/must archival reference service be? (p. 267-268)
4. user must come to the finding aids already armed with names of people and organizations associated with the topics of research
5. problems with these traditional descriptive procedures
a. they focus on the records, not on the users' needs
b. original order results in useless inventories which describe the order but not the content of records
c. repository guides are out of date as soon as they're published
d. current practice relies too much on the subject knowledge and memory of the individual archivist, and is too dependent on the personalities of staff and user
e. archivists aren't clear on how to do a successful reference interview, and aren't well trained in question negotiation (KKK class exercise)
f. users want subject access, not just proper names
E. Charging fees and the marketing of archives
1. archivists and curators often are unaware of the value of their services, particularly with regard to the reproduction and use of photographs and other materials in their collections
2. growing interest in selling reproductions of visual objects from archival collections as archival funding shrinks, many professionals are starting to realize that the sale of images can represent additional income that can be used for collection development, preservation, or other archival needs
3. the archivist's task includes planning, managing, pricing, and marketing reproductions of all types of collection holdings
4. financial management of an archives must be realistic
a. archives shouldn't seek a profit from their users
b. their sponsoring institution ought to commit to providing all necessary funding for all archival operations
c. nonetheless, one cannot expect the institution to provide for all of the services any given user may desire.
d. baseline: the archives should provide free of charge the services it could afford to offer to every one of its users, assuming that each of its users requested that service. National Archives of Canada provides many of its publications free of charge to anyone who requests them, whether Canadian or not (sent 75 issues of The Archivist, 1976-1991; postage alone cost CA $17.65).
5. case studies:
a. Colorado State Archives was forced to begin assessing user fees when its existence was threatened in 1991 (see list)
b. Center of SW Studies photoduplication request form
--drawn from fee schedules of Colo. Historical Society, Denver Public Library Western History Dept., BPL Carnegie Branch Library, et al.
F. Group (if you have one) exercises
1. do Trudy Peterson's role-play exercise #1 (p. 60-61) showing the importance of having an established reference policy and being able to articulate it
2. also do Peterson's exercise #2 (p. 63) re equal access and #8 (p. 77) re applying the restrictions of a deed of gift
XII. Reference services in archives
A. Characteristics of researchers
1. archivists have assumed that users will want high recall and not mind low precision; willing to wade through many irrelevant documents so as not to miss any important ones
2. one increasingly common characteristic of researchers today is that they lack the time and funding for thorough research of a topic
a. rather than hoping to sift through archives to obtain all materials related to their topic, they demand more immediate access to directly relevant items
b. as one scholar commented, "there's never enough information or there's always too much information." (Barbara Orbach, "The View from the Researcher's Desk," in Winter 1991 American Archivist, p. 35)
3. what is the archivist's responsibility in these changing times?
B. What is the archivist's job as regards reference service?
1. to help the researcher develop a search strategy
2. not to give all the desired answers, but to help them narrow their search among the aggregates through provision of generalized descriptions
3. staff won't do substantive research for a user
4. questions of quantity of items per request (see email)
C. Goals and objectives for reference service
1. (Fred Stielow) goal should be to provide reference service to "the people," not to "the researcher"
a. most users are not scholars but amateurs
b. this change from serving the elite to serving the people began in 1789 with the French Revolution
c. society isn't going to perceive archives as needful unless they promote themselves as stewards of information resources
2. is this a changed role?
D. Forms of reference service
1. written and phoned requests
2. on-site visits
E. Methods of on-site reference service
1. provide written info on procedures, fees and repository rules
2. personal interview (p. 259 Chalou)
3. info service; providing info from the records
a. document service: providing the actual materials, 1 series at a time
b. retrieval = getting materials off the shelves & into users' hands
c. to browse or not to browse?
(1) researching in open stacks (the American way) leads to different methods of using documents
(2) pros and cons of browsing
F. How do researchers locate their sources? (Pugh article)
1. usually by consulting the work of other scholars (by conversations with them and by looking into the sources they've listed in their footnotes and bibliographies) than by consulting such finding aids as the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC).
2. researchers tend to prefer personal help from the archival staff over using the finding aids produced by that staff
3. researchers tend to be unfamiliar with the nature--or existence--of those guides and rely on the assistance of knowledgeable staff
4. Internet services now are a predominant means – and are not always the most successful
5. all of this is a strong argument for the reference interview
G. Different types of researchers ask different types of questions:
1. historian asks what happened?
2. biographer asks who are you?
3. genealogist asks who am I?
[4. confused person asks where am I? Did something happen?]
H. Genealogists (otherwise known as family historians) are important constituents
1. they often comprise at least half of the clientele of an archives, and increasingly so
2. according to the 1992 report, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage (p. 13), "genealogy ranks as one of the top two or three hobbies nationwide."
3. genealogists find particular usefulness in census records, immigration records, military case files of individuals, land records, wills, payrolls. Much of this information is available on microfilm disseminated throughout the country.
I. Remember, "researchers turn to the historical record not for the sake of using it but to answer questions" (Ann D. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage, p. 45)
J. Reference strategies:
1. recognize your high-use materials and make arrangements for ready access to them in a way that will not endanger them
2. this may involve making microform copies for self-service use
a. microfilm has drawbacks, however:
(1) costly to produce
(2) impermanent
(3) slow to access
(4) difficult to index and to manipulate
(5) a good reference medium but not a good archival medium, unless it's the only one
b. is the answer with automated access to actual info?
c. example of CARLterm image access system
K. Types of access tools
1. guide
a. usually refers to published or unpublished attempts to describe all the collections of a particular repository
b. usually includes a subject index to the collections
2. survey (often called guides when published)
a. attempt to locate all material on a given subject
b. usually describes records distributed among numerous repositories
c. thousands of such surveys exist (e.g. to records about people with handicaps in the U.S.)
3. each guide should be indexed and the repository should have a master index of all the guides
4. "a good info retrieval system...helps people to ask better questions.: (Pugh, p. 275)
5. "once a repository establishes a viable level [of access to its collections], it should carry through with techniques that encourage independence such as clear signs, handouts that explain available tools and their relationships, and regularly scheduled or videotaped introductions to the facility." Staff needs to explain the different organization and access tools for primary sources as opposed to the secondary sources which are more familiar to library users. (Barbara Orbach, "The View from the Researcher's Desk," in Winter 1991 American Archivist, p. 35-42)
L. Evaluating reference service: indicators (Chalou, p. 262-263)
1. protection and care of the records
2. thoroughness of reference service
3. courtesy shown users, and firmness in adhering to policies
4. inter-staff cooperation
5. users' evaluations (letters, verbally to staff, word of mouth to colleagues, acknowledgments in publications)
6. so, how should we gauge our research center's quality?
a. not in terms of size
b. but in terms of how successful our users are in
(1) obtaining the information they want and
(2) whether we can deliver that information to them in a timely and appropriate manner
c. for the users, success is getting their hands on what they need, when they need it
M. Group (?) exercises
1. do Trudy Peterson's role-play exercises #4 (p. 67-68) re the initial interview, and #5 (p. 70-71) re denying access to originals when copies exist
2. also do Peterson's exercise #3 (p. 65)
3. do Peterson's exercise #6 (p. 73) re the archivist's role as information broker and possibly exercise #7 (p. 75) re limiting reference service
N. Mid-course review
1. see 11 pages of distilled review notes from first 6 weeks of the course
2. answer this essay question: the 19th century has been called the era of bad paper. Agree or disagree?
This week's most important to you;
it's your one time for thorough review.
Your self-giv’n exam
shows how much you must cram
to guarantee you will pull through.
XI. Researcher access to documentary sources
#6
Reference service and access
are your passport to real success.
Correctly provided,
the public's invited
to use now what once was a mess.
A. Definitions of access and reference service
1. access = who can see the materials, under what circumstances?
a. what may a user see
b. and what may a user not see?
2. reference
a. (Chalou, p. 257 in Reader) = process of making info in the holdings of a repository available
b. convergence of 3 elements (Chalou article), each of which must be prepared:
(1) researcher
(2) records
(3) staff
B. Characteristics of records as regards access
1. information is a commodity
George Brown, Congressman from 26th District, CA, quoted in March 1991 newsletter of The Commission on Preservation and Access: "Information is one of the very few commodities which has the characteristic of being taken or sold, but without diminishing the resources of the original owner."
2. variety of info in an archives is demanding
"Archivists are called upon to manage materials created by every possible discipline or activity and to provide them for questioners from every conceivable background. The knowledge base required to support this activity must include an understanding of the archivist's role as an intermediary in an information exchange, an appreciation of the peculiar nature of information/media, and recognition of the wide assortment of problem-solving approaches...employed by users." (Fred Stielow in Winter 1991 American Archivist, p. 21)
3. three kinds of materials in the typical archives:
a. archives of the institution of which the repository is a part;
(1) distinctions between public and private archives here
(2) divergence in objectives, audiences
(3) a public archives does not pass judgements on researchers' motives, so long as the researchers are not harming the materials; test of admission is the need to know; admit everyone who needs to use these materials to answer their reference questions
b. archives of another institution
c. personal papers
4. categories b & c are received by deed, transfer, donation, purchase; instrument of transaction decides the access
a. each comes in with different access restrictions
(1) private institutions usually have legal title to the records they create
(a) they usually establish their own terms of access
(b) with the exception of legal requirements that certain types of records be made available (e.g., if received federal funds, even if not a federal institution)
(2) government has laws that apply to its records
(a) property laws, laws of replevin, records statutes, freedom of information, privacy acts
(b) but the laws are different at federal, state and local levels
(c) access requirements can come from any of these levels, by statutes, regulations, or developing case law (=how judges are deciding these sorts of cases)
C. Restrictions may be imposed by the donor or by the repository
1. reasons to impose restrictions:
a. to protect the reputations of living persons
(1) unless they're in the public sphere
-celebrities have chosen a more vulnerable role in society than private individuals
(2) example of census records, released after 72 years (1920 census just out March 2, 1992)
b. to protect the records
2. limitations
a. "need to know"
(1) most institutions limit access to what they consider legitimate reference service
(2) archival holdings are not to be used for general info available in published works at a library
b. other common restrictions
(1) the right to consult, to copy and to publish
(2) either because these restrictions were imposed by their creators or through legislation protecting rights of privacy and property (copyright)
(3) curtail access by someone who has violated stated user procedures (theft, carelessness...)
(4) statutory restrictions, agency/institutional restrictions
(5) archivists try to minimize donor restrictions
(a) never accept a forever closed collection
(b) always have a deadline for restricted access
c. unwritten restrictions
"the ability of researchers to locate and consult archival holdings, however, is more frequently limited by 'unwritten' restrictions arising from inadequate arrangement or lack of detailed identification and description, the fragile condition of many documents and the delays inherent in conservation treatment methods, obscure terminology and subtle intimidation by certain concepts." (The Archivist, Nov.-Dec. 1984, p.1) (assigned reading, this article by Patricia Kennedy)
d. preservation vs. access
(1) agree or disagree? (Chalou) "proper preservation of records...must take precedence over the needs of researchers?"
(2) should an unprocessed collection be made available?
3. attorney David Weinstein's comments on copyright etc.
a. until the law was changed, the standard term of copyright was 28 years per term for 2 terms, "but because Congress kept extending the term while they futzed around with copyright law, the second term was extended to a max of 47 years. Hence if it is published and is more than 75 years old, it is in the public domain. See Circular R15a, Duration of Copyright, from the Copyright Office." (per email from Peter Hirtle, NLM, 23-Jun-1992)
b. the Copyright Office has a query hotline: 202/479-0700. A specialist there can give you up-to- date info and send you a series of free handy fliers on fair use and other commonly perplexing issues
4. equal access policy
a. primary policy of reference service
b. must apply access limitations consistently to all researchers
c. this is an ideal, never 100% possible even at public institutions
d. example of a departed professor's litigation research files, which he wanted to be open only to students
D. Relationship of researcher access to archival theories of provenenance (Pugh article in Reader p. 264)
1. different arrangement of library and archive materials
a. subject vs. provenance
b. abstract vs. organic
2. archival reference assumes interaction between user and archivist
a. archivist mediates the guides
b. should staffing at a large repository be by subject specialization or by functional specialization?
3. how personalize should/can/must archival reference service be? (p. 267-268)
4. user must come to the finding aids already armed with names of people and organizations associated with the topics of research
5. problems with these traditional descriptive procedures
a. they focus on the records, not on the users' needs
b. original order results in useless inventories which describe the order but not the content of records
c. repository guides are out of date as soon as they're published
d. current practice relies too much on the subject knowledge and memory of the individual archivist, and is too dependent on the personalities of staff and user
e. archivists aren't clear on how to do a successful reference interview, and aren't well trained in question negotiation (KKK class exercise)
f. users want subject access, not just proper names
E. Charging fees and the marketing of archives
1. archivists and curators often are unaware of the value of their services, particularly with regard to the reproduction and use of photographs and other materials in their collections
2. growing interest in selling reproductions of visual objects from archival collections as archival funding shrinks, many professionals are starting to realize that the sale of images can represent additional income that can be used for collection development, preservation, or other archival needs
3. the archivist's task includes planning, managing, pricing, and marketing reproductions of all types of collection holdings
4. financial management of an archives must be realistic
a. archives shouldn't seek a profit from their users
b. their sponsoring institution ought to commit to providing all necessary funding for all archival operations
c. nonetheless, one cannot expect the institution to provide for all of the services any given user may desire.
d. baseline: the archives should provide free of charge the services it could afford to offer to every one of its users, assuming that each of its users requested that service. National Archives of Canada provides many of its publications free of charge to anyone who requests them, whether Canadian or not (sent 75 issues of The Archivist, 1976-1991; postage alone cost CA $17.65).
5. case studies:
a. Colorado State Archives was forced to begin assessing user fees when its existence was threatened in 1991 (see list)
b. Center of SW Studies photoduplication request form
--drawn from fee schedules of Colo. Historical Society, Denver Public Library Western History Dept., BPL Carnegie Branch Library, et al.
F. Group (if you have one) exercises
1. do Trudy Peterson's role-play exercise #1 (p. 60-61) showing the importance of having an established reference policy and being able to articulate it
2. also do Peterson's exercise #2 (p. 63) re equal access and #8 (p. 77) re applying the restrictions of a deed of gift
XII. Reference services in archives
A. Characteristics of researchers
1. archivists have assumed that users will want high recall and not mind low precision; willing to wade through many irrelevant documents so as not to miss any important ones
2. one increasingly common characteristic of researchers today is that they lack the time and funding for thorough research of a topic
a. rather than hoping to sift through archives to obtain all materials related to their topic, they demand more immediate access to directly relevant items
b. as one scholar commented, "there's never enough information or there's always too much information." (Barbara Orbach, "The View from the Researcher's Desk," in Winter 1991 American Archivist, p. 35)
3. what is the archivist's responsibility in these changing times?
B. What is the archivist's job as regards reference service?
1. to help the researcher develop a search strategy
2. not to give all the desired answers, but to help them narrow their search among the aggregates through provision of generalized descriptions
3. staff won't do substantive research for a user
4. questions of quantity of items per request (see email)
C. Goals and objectives for reference service
1. (Fred Stielow) goal should be to provide reference service to "the people," not to "the researcher"
a. most users are not scholars but amateurs
b. this change from serving the elite to serving the people began in 1789 with the French Revolution
c. society isn't going to perceive archives as needful unless they promote themselves as stewards of information resources
2. is this a changed role?
D. Forms of reference service
1. written and phoned requests
2. on-site visits
E. Methods of on-site reference service
1. provide written info on procedures, fees and repository rules
2. personal interview (p. 259 Chalou)
3. info service; providing info from the records
a. document service: providing the actual materials, 1 series at a time
b. retrieval = getting materials off the shelves & into users' hands
c. to browse or not to browse?
(1) researching in open stacks (the American way) leads to different methods of using documents
(2) pros and cons of browsing
F. How do researchers locate their sources? (Pugh article)
1. usually by consulting the work of other scholars (by conversations with them and by looking into the sources they've listed in their footnotes and bibliographies) than by consulting such finding aids as the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC).
2. researchers tend to prefer personal help from the archival staff over using the finding aids produced by that staff
3. researchers tend to be unfamiliar with the nature--or existence--of those guides and rely on the assistance of knowledgeable staff
4. Internet services now are a predominant means – and are not always the most successful
5. all of this is a strong argument for the reference interview
G. Different types of researchers ask different types of questions:
1. historian asks what happened?
2. biographer asks who are you?
3. genealogist asks who am I?
[4. confused person asks where am I? Did something happen?]
H. Genealogists (otherwise known as family historians) are important constituents
1. they often comprise at least half of the clientele of an archives, and increasingly so
2. according to the 1992 report, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage (p. 13), "genealogy ranks as one of the top two or three hobbies nationwide."
3. genealogists find particular usefulness in census records, immigration records, military case files of individuals, land records, wills, payrolls. Much of this information is available on microfilm disseminated throughout the country.
I. Remember, "researchers turn to the historical record not for the sake of using it but to answer questions" (Ann D. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage, p. 45)
J. Reference strategies:
1. recognize your high-use materials and make arrangements for ready access to them in a way that will not endanger them
2. this may involve making microform copies for self-service use
a. microfilm has drawbacks, however:
(1) costly to produce
(2) impermanent
(3) slow to access
(4) difficult to index and to manipulate
(5) a good reference medium but not a good archival medium, unless it's the only one
b. is the answer with automated access to actual info?
c. example of CARLterm image access system
K. Types of access tools
1. guide
a. usually refers to published or unpublished attempts to describe all the collections of a particular repository
b. usually includes a subject index to the collections
2. survey (often called guides when published)
a. attempt to locate all material on a given subject
b. usually describes records distributed among numerous repositories
c. thousands of such surveys exist (e.g. to records about people with handicaps in the U.S.)
3. each guide should be indexed and the repository should have a master index of all the guides
4. "a good info retrieval system...helps people to ask better questions.: (Pugh, p. 275)
5. "once a repository establishes a viable level [of access to its collections], it should carry through with techniques that encourage independence such as clear signs, handouts that explain available tools and their relationships, and regularly scheduled or videotaped introductions to the facility." Staff needs to explain the different organization and access tools for primary sources as opposed to the secondary sources which are more familiar to library users. (Barbara Orbach, "The View from the Researcher's Desk," in Winter 1991 American Archivist, p. 35-42)
L. Evaluating reference service: indicators (Chalou, p. 262-263)
1. protection and care of the records
2. thoroughness of reference service
3. courtesy shown users, and firmness in adhering to policies
4. inter-staff cooperation
5. users' evaluations (letters, verbally to staff, word of mouth to colleagues, acknowledgments in publications)
6. so, how should we gauge our research center's quality?
a. not in terms of size
b. but in terms of how successful our users are in
(1) obtaining the information they want and
(2) whether we can deliver that information to them in a timely and appropriate manner
c. for the users, success is getting their hands on what they need, when they need it
M. Group (?) exercises
1. do Trudy Peterson's role-play exercises #4 (p. 67-68) re the initial interview, and #5 (p. 70-71) re denying access to originals when copies exist
2. also do Peterson's exercise #3 (p. 65)
3. do Peterson's exercise #6 (p. 73) re the archivist's role as information broker and possibly exercise #7 (p. 75) re limiting reference service
N. Mid-course review
1. see 11 pages of distilled review notes from first 6 weeks of the course
2. answer this essay question: the 19th century has been called the era of bad paper. Agree or disagree?
This week's most important to you;
it's your one time for thorough review.
Your self-giv’n exam
shows how much you must cram
to guarantee you will pull through.
