More Product, Less Process — When Less is More

An archive is only as useful as its collections, and its collections are only useful if they’re accessible. A survey of repositories in 2003–4 “showed that 34% have more than half of their holdings unprocessed; 60% of repositories have at least a third of their collections unprocessed.”[1] That is a significant amount of resources that are simply unavailable to researchers, unless they somehow know a repository has particular unprocessed collections and can somehow gain access to said unprocessed collection. Even a collection that has been minimally processed is more useful to researchers that one that has not been processed at all.

“More Product, Less Process” (MPLP) is a methodology of processing archival records to make them available to end-users faster. Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner describe MPLP as “a set of arrangement, preservation and description that 1) expedites getting collection materials into the hands of users; 2) assures arrangement of materials adequate to user needs; 3) takes the minimal steps necessary to physically preserve collection materials; and 4) describes materials sufficient to promote use.”[2] In layman’s terms: The processing doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful to the end users — so stop worrying about perfect processing. Processing that is “good enough” saves time and money and makes the collection available to the public faster.

In a perfect world of unlimited money for archives, MPLP wouldn’t merit a mention. If archives could hire as many people as they needed to perfectly process every collection — there would be no backlogs and quite probably a significant drop in the unemployment rate among humanities graduates. The problem is that budgets get cut every year and there simply isn’t enough time, money or manpower to process a collection down to the item level. MPLP doesn’t abandon the principles of processing archival collections — but it acknowledges that the “perfect” way of doing things simply isn’t working anymore (and hasn’t for some time) and if an archive’s true purpose is to make collections available to the public, the process has to speed up.

MPLP is mainly about the physical processing of a collection. First, archivists need to take into account the fact that the collection is no longer stored in someone’s office, or worse yet, basement or attic. If archives make sure their storage spaces are properly climate controlled, the cool temperatures and low humidity will go a long way in preserving documents without any additional intervention. Paper clips and staples don’t have to be removed. Putting documents into new folders really isn’t necessary unless the old folder is damaged or has glue stickers that could attract pests. Descriptions can stay very high level — enough to give a researcher a good idea of what is in the folder, but it doesn’t have to go down to listing each document. Weeding (taking out duplicate copies of things) can also be bypassed. The time it would take to go through and identify extraneous copies simply isn’t worth it considering that the extra copies aren’t really causing any harm.

While it all sounds good on paper, I can also provide a real-world example of where MPLP could definitely speed up processing.

I am currently doing a mini-internship at a local archive and I am processing part of a collection. While the processing is not quite to item-level description, it is very close to it. In the particular series of folders I am working with, each folder is its own distinct “subject” and all the documents within are related to that subject. Throughout the series, each folder has similar document types. In processing the folders, all paper clips and staples are pulled and discarded, the documents within are sorted and arranged into document “types” and each type is placed in chronological order. Each document type is then entered into Archivist’s Toolkit (AT) as part of the description for the folder. While each folder becomes faster to process with experience, it is still time consuming — I am currently running at about 35–40 minutes per folder. However, if the processing was boiled down to just the following, it could speed up the process considerably:

— Refolder only if there are stickers/glue on old folders that could attract pests.
— Quick scan of documents to ensure there are no misplaced documents in the folder, and pull any staples or paper clips that are already rusting.
— No reorganization of anything within the folder.
— Minimal intervention for preservation — mylar sleeves for photos, preservation copies of documents that are already in very bad shape.
— Enter into AT as simply folder number/subject name as folder title.

I think it could drop the processing time down to 15 minutes per folder at the most, and eliminating descriptions of document types would also speed up entry into AT. The series itself could have a description stating “each folder will likely contain the following types of documents: ‘X, Y, and Z’” so researchers would have some idea of what to expect in each folder.

While MPLP is an effective approach for speeding up the processing time of a collection, it is not going to be appropriate for every collection. Collections that are primarily objects rather than documents will likely need item level descriptions. A finding aid that simply describes a collection as “50 film reels” does indeed tell the researcher that there are 50 film reels in the collection, but doesn’t provide enough guidance to know which reel he or she needs to actually inspect. In a small collection, MPLP might simply not save enough time to warrant the archivist to forego detailed processing. Collections that hold very old or delicate documents will certainly require more preservation intervention. Collections that are lucky enough to not have significant backlogs and adequate funding and manpower may simply prefer to go with traditional processing because they can.

MPLP doesn’t mean sloppy processing. It is a mechanism to bring collections to the public faster, and given the backlogs that archives are experiencing with processing, the “less is more” approach is definitely needed and appropriate.

[1] Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner, “More Product, Less Process,” American Archivist, no. 68 (2005): 210.
[2] Ibid., 212–3.