The Importance of Flexibility and Pragmatism

Processors need to be flexible and pragmatic when processing archival material, especially given that:

• Processing resources—including processors' time—are limited.

• Finding aids are never truly "completed." 

For example, material may come to the library in a disorganized manner. This "received order" (public link) may not match the material's actual original order, thereby requiring the processing archivist to reconstruct the material's original order. Alternatively, the processing archivist may conclude that the material lacks any kind of useful original order. The processing archivist would, in this scenario, need to consider how to impose a useful arrangement on what other archivists in the field have termed "original chaos."

While working with their collections, processors will also need to consider topics such as:

• The most efficient and effective way to describe the material (e.g. at the folder-level, box-level, etc.).

• How their processing decisions will impact users' ability to locate and access material. For example: Creating an archival object in ArchivesSpace that is associated with a 50GB downloadable package would be extremely difficult for most researchers to access. 

• How to, when appropriate, appropriately "future proof" newly produced or updated finding aids so that succeeding processors can effectively incorporate additional material into a collection.

• How the archival material will be represented in the Bentley's different systems and how these systems interact with one another.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. It instead illustrates some of the questions facing processors and the necessity of practicing flexible and pragmatic processing!