'The devil is in the detail': simplify processing to reduce backlog, provide access to more information.

AuthorJanes, Sara
PositionBook review

Extensible Processing for Archives and Special Collections

Author: Daniel A. Santamaria

Publisher: ALA Neal-Schuman

Publication Date: 2015

Length: 248 pages

Price: $75

ISBN: 978-0-8389-1257-7

Source: www.alastore.ala.org

Daniel A. Santamaria's Extensible Processing for Archives and Special Collections is a highly practical and method-oriented guide to making archival processing more efficient and effective. Santamaria starts with a few basic precepts:

* Most traditional archival processing is done in greater detail and takes more time than necessary.

* Providing access to records is the end goal of processing and description work.

From there he establishes that archivists could and should change their processing practices to get more done at lower cost.

Speed up to Reduce Backlogs

Santamaria's book expands on "More Product, Less Process" (MPLP), a methodology advocated by Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner in a 2005 American Archivist article "More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing" that has been discussed widely and frequently in the archival community to the present.

He applies MPLP principles to an extensible processing program, which he defines as an iterative system for surveying and providing baseline access to all archival collections and for eliminating processing backlogs.

Top-level descriptions and basic inventories for all collections, he argues, can be done quickly and provide better access for researchers than careful arrangement, detailed preservation work, and extensive description for just a fraction of the records.

Learn 'How,' Not 'Why'

This book is procedure-oriented and includes examples, templates, and thorough instructions for running processing projects in the way suggested. It's written in plain, detailed language and doesn't leave anything out: this book tells you exactly what you need to know to start using extensible processing methods in your work.

The appendices make up a quarter of the text: the first four are case studies showing the application of the techniques to a variety of situations, which I found to be a useful complement to the less concrete discussion elsewhere in the book.

Santamaria's focus is entirely on how, not on what or why. The volume does not make any attempt to address the theoretical challenges of appraisal or selection of records, instead treating appraisal as one step of many that must be done.

It's Not So Simple

Likewise, the text assumes that review for...

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