University of Sussex Special Collections and Mass Observation Archive Blog

Showcasing our archives, collections, activities and projects

The First Plan

Mar

5

I had 6 months funding to complete a 3 year project.  Clearly I would have to prioritise.

To be clear, my project goals were:

  1. Catalogue University of Sussex records to Item level using ISAD (G) compliant cataloguing procedures.
  2. Identify personal paper collections and assess their suitability for researcher access according to the Data Protection Act.
  3. Employ University of Sussex students as Special Collections resources permit to catalogue collection records.

Let’s take a look at these in a little more detail:

1.  Catalogue to Item Level:

  • I decided to catalogue records that we were legally required to keep according to the University of Sussex Retention schedule.
  • I also decided to catalogue more frequently used items: records relating to the University Architecture and to student activism, on the basis that more detailed records for them would be the most helpful.
  • I would create cataloguing procedures that were consistent with ISAD (G) in the absence of formal cataloguing procedures in the archive.

This left me with a priority list of 102 boxes to be catalogued during the first 6 month period.  Pre-project predictions indicated that this was an achievable goal – nevertheless, I planned to select a sample of boxes and catalogue them to item level to prove the accuracy of these predictions.

I didn’t want to completely ignore the rest of the collection as I felt this would leave a potentially disorganised and de-contextualised mass of records.  In order to allay this fear I decided to:

  • Write a full collection level record and provide full descriptions of every series of records at series level.

I also didn’t want to ignore the fact that it was very hard for staff to find records in the collection.  Therefore, I determined to:

  • Create a new handlist/finding aid
  • Find all the separately catalogued series of records and import them into CALM.
  • Re-locate series of records to more logical spaces in the functional arrangement.
  • Box remaining records not in archive boxes.

And for the future:

  • Write procedural guidelines for accessioning new University of Sussex records and inputting catalogue entries to ensure the UoS collection is maintained after the completion of the project.

2.  Data Protection:

At this early stage, I needed to find out more about the Data Protection Act.  My plan was to then apply the principles within the act to the Personal Paper Collections of the University of Sussex and embargo records accordingly.  This part of the project was problematic and I will expand on it in later posts.

3.  Volunteers

I made all these plans with a consideration to the amount of volunteer time I could muster up.  Unfortunately I had started the project during the Summer vacation which meant there were no students around.  Fortunately I was able to employ a Phd student for the first couple of months of the project.  I wouldn’t be able to find student volunteers until students returned for the Autumn Semester in September.

There was plenty more that I wanted to achieve that was beyond the scope of a 6 month project.  We’ll see in the next post how my post was extended and how I was able come up with a new plan to achieve these goals.  However, should my contract not be extended, I was confident that this 6 month period would have a big impact.

P.s

I realise I didn’t deliver my promise to explain how a logjam can get things wrong.  Don’t worry, it’s coming!

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