I learned much about the standards of archival processing while I was a fellow at the Center for Primary Research and Training at UCLA. While there, I processed the papers of art critic Jules Langsner, the papers of activist and scholar Josephine Fowler, and the pop culture collection of Middle Eastern Americana created by Jonathan Friedlander. Perhaps most important for my professional development, however, was the training I received from CFPRT Coordinator Kelley Wolfe Bachli, who wrote a succinct and informative processing manual to train each CFPRT fellow.
I brought this training manual with me to North Carolina, and with Kelley’s permission I incorporated her work with the standards used at my institution, DACS, and the Archivist’s Toolkit User Manual. The result? The Archival Processing Guide for Staff, Students, and Volunteers. I also include the chapters about processing and the over-the-shoulder look at processing from Michael J. Fox and Peter L. Wilkerson’s Introduction to Archives, now available free online.
The guide and its rules are constantly under review but I think this would be a great starting resource for any archives or special collections repository looking for some standards for training staff, students, and volunteers about the basics of archival processing. Comments are welcome!
