As the very astute Shelly Kelly and others have made known to all of us, there are archives out there that do collect personal papers of a wide variety, like that of my family. I receive many more emails than blog comments about my blog postings, so to summarize here: there are many such places, including the Society of American Archivists Archives in Milwaukee, which has the personal papers of at least two former SAA president and a few more of SAA members, including papers of their families.
So if a person came into your archives and said that they were a faculty member at your university and wanted to donate their papers, that normally works. If a person says that they also have the papers of their parents, grandparents, some aunts & uncles, and other family members - what would you do?
Under the doctrine of provenance, how does this dilemma of multiplicity fit into the doctrine? Do you tell the faculty member that you'll take their papers but not that of their family members? Do we portion out the family members' papers to other places, other archives? This is an option I too have thought of. For instance,
My grandmother's papers and those of my mother could go to the Colorado Historical Society. The papers of my great grandfather could go to someplace in Kansas. My papers, however, where do they fit? I am a graduate of three different schools in three states. I have worked at archives in two other states. I am from an entirely different state than those? Where should I put my papers?
I have not even mentioned the genealogy files I have, which amount to about ten cubic feet of materials related to twelve major family lines and about twenty-seven minor family lines. They contain genealogical records dating from 831 A.D. for one family line now mainly in Illinois, 1450 A.D. in one family line now mainly in western North Carolina, and some family lines in eastern Tennessee, northwestern South Carolina, Illinois, Kansas, and northeastern Colorado. Do I divide these records up and send them to an archives or genealogical records repository that exists in these places? I've toyed with that, but doesn't such an arrangement mean my papers are divided and lose some of the provenancial value toward the whole collection?
The advantages of dividing up the papers - they can be used in the locality to which the majority of users will expect to find them. The disadvantages - loss of original order, interruption of provenance.
Where should such collections go? I am not really talking about my own collections, as they won't be divided for decades, hopefully, but what about those of other donors? I have long suspected that there is a large group of families who do not donate their family's papers because they don't have one place to put all the papers. Am I barking up the wrong tree?
And what about other collections? I have a collection of Census 2000 memorabilia that includes about 30 posters (some of them limited edition) and about 300 pieces of ephemera related to the marketing campaign of that census. One former NARA archivist saw them about six years ago and called the collection one of the largest outside the federal government. I have tried to sell it on eBay to no avail. I have offered it to individual archives free, but no one has taken it. If I find a repository to take this collection, finally, will giving it to them and not giving them my family papers interrupt or disrupt the integrity of my collection?
I think all of the above discussion points need to be discussed and all the questions above need to be asked before donating any papers to a repository. I think we need to do more than just give a potential donor a brochure and some basic information. Too often, donor expectations are more than archivists can provide for and archivists expect more than what they get (or less). We need a dialog, something I think many archivists neglect or dispense with because we are "too busy" to deal with collection development.
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2 comments:
how do libraries deal with collection management ?
and yes even leading donors gifts are often turned away for various reasons. do you plan to volunteer at the archive and 'process' your family collections personally ?
These are routine questions today at most libraries that do have archives in them. Local history collections have not become the depository for every family history collection unless large amounts of money go along with it to process such collections.
Donors are usually cleary informed of this fact when they ask about donating materials archival, books other realia, and a curator may not be the same person 5 yrs from now who will finally get to the collection and say what are we going to do with this collection, we are moving out of the building, we need to make decisions and this has not been touched in 5 yrs. etc
Donors usually are given this information immediately and up front and must sign forms advising them of this fact and is something to likewise take into consideration of that is not the guarantee of access/use you envision.
A curator is not going to be the same person in the organization deciding on how to process such collections unless it is a very small 1 person operation.
Again, it will make a difference on what the value is going to be to the collection, is it an important addition to add based on their current collection plan, or is it going to be a lesser priority to their collections.
I would always send a letter about what your collection contains with some specifics on size of collection and formats.
Many people do not often realize how much time (years) it can take to process 1 collection even with a good sized staff available.
Russell: ..."I think we need to do more than just give a potential donor a brochure and some basic information. Too often, donor expectations are more than archivists can provide for and archivists expect more than what they get (or less). We need a dialog, something I think many archivists neglect or dispense with because we are "too busy" to deal with collection development.
I don't think archivists or librarians are 'too busy' to deal with collection management at all, rather, donors do not want to accept the fact of how it's done very often.
This is a question to answer your personal collections you wish to donate somewhere. As a practicing archivist, how would you make those decisions yourself if you were working at special collections department at a large academic research library for example ?
What are your policies in place for collection management? Thish does not always involve one person making decisions.
Just somethings to keep in mind
more dialog is always good, however much dialog is already out there in the field.
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