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Session: Reference Service and Minimal Processing: Challenges and Opportunities (Session 307)

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Thursday, August 30, 2007 - 2:45 PM-4:15 PM

Session Description in SAA Program

[edit] Speakers and Papers:

Susan McElrath, Chair, American University Library

Dennis Meissner, Minnesota Historical Society

Tiah Edmunson-Morton, Oregon State University Archives - “Does Minimal Processing Mean Minimal Reference? A Study of Northwest Digital Archives Users” Presentation

Anne Foster, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections - “Reference and Minimal Processing: Examining a Reciprocal Relationship” (Slides and the text of the presentation are linked from the Northwest Archives Processing Initiative's blog at http://uaflibrary.us/blogs/nwapi/the-new-normal-minimum-standards-processing-at-uaf/)

Shannon Bowen, University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center - “What Is the Product of This Process? Investigating the Effect on Reference Service of One Iteration of the Greene-Meissner Protocols”

[edit] Comments, Discussions and Further Information

This is one of several sessions that address issues raised in Greene and Meissner's More Product, Less Process.

Archival Musings blog post about this session: Session #307

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As with virtually all of the "More Product, Less Process"-related sessions at conferences, the speakers in this session were almost all strong MPLP advocates. (This is understandable, but not necessarily representative of the views of the larger archives and special collections community, where there still seem to be many pockets of resistance.)

I found Anne Foster's (from University of Alaska Fairbanks) presentation the most compelling in this session because it demonstrated that the changes on the reference end do not necessarily need to be drastic. (In many cases, they are things we should be doing anyway.) UAF participates in the Northwest Archives Processing Initiative, a consortium that received funding from NHPRC to essentially test "More Product, Less Process" across a number of institutions and types of collections.

Foster said that, as a result of implementing minimal processing as the processing standard for collections at UAF, they have found that the number and type of collections requested by researchers has changed. Some of the newly (and minimally) processed collections are now among the most requested collections at UAF. In response, they have made some modifications to their reference procedures. The new procedures include:

  • Increased supervision of researchers in the reading room, accomplished via the hiring of more student assistants.
  • An enhanced researcher orientation to assist them with using minimally processed collections. Researchers are also given placeholders to mark their place in the boxes (so that folders can more easily be returned to their intended place in the boxes).
  • Returned boxes are checked in rather than just returned to the stacks.
  • Revisions to their access restrictions policy, allowing for materials to be reviewed for sensitive or restricted materials at the time of the researcher request or when materials are retrieved. (This access policy is indicated in the catalog records for the collections.)

Their policy when it comes to processing is that they do the minimum work required to make the collection available, "until use determines otherwise." Collections are reevaluated based on use and feedback from the reference staff.

Shannon Bowen's (of the American Heritage Center) presentation was also interesting, particularly because her institution is clearly the furthest along in the profession in implementing "More Product, Less Process" and probably the only institution so far to take full advantage of its potential. (Since Mark Greene is the head of AHC, this probably isn't that surprising, although, interestingly enough, Dennis Meissner's shop, Minnesota Historical Society, doesn't seem to be nearly as far along, if the reports I heard of their presentation in session 406 are any indication. Meissner was also on this panel, but talked primarily about the broad implications of MPLP for reference, rather than the specifics in his institution.) If you've read the articles about AHC deciding to deaccession 70% of their collections and cataloging the rest of their holdings in 24 months, then you know that it's a pretty dramatic case study. Bowen talked about a few changes they've made, including splitting responsibility for creating on-demand contents lists between the accessioning and reference units of their operation and collecting feedback from researchers related to use of minimally processed collections. ( User:Cdibella)

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