Preserving archival collections requires more than short-term interventions or reactive measures. Establishing a long-term archival preservation strategy is essential to ensure that materials remain accessible, stable, and intact for future generations.
As the initial step in managing incoming materials, accessioning is a critical function within archival work. The process ensures that newly acquired collections are formally accepted, documented, and incorporated into the repository’s holdings.
Developing an acquisition policy is critical for archivists because it sets the foundation for how an institution acquires and manages its collections. A well-crafted acquisition policy ensures the archives remains focused, relevant, and aligned with the institution’s mission and strategic goals.
Archival acquisition is a crucial process in managing records; it encompasses the methods and principles by which archival institutions acquire and take responsibility for records. It is a fundamental aspect of archival work, affecting records’ immediate management and long-term preservation and accessibility. Understanding archival acquisition involves grasping its purpose, methods, challenges, and best practices.
Archivists are tasked with making informed selections of primary sources to provide the future with a representation of the human experience. They should build their collections by looking at the bigger picture of history and collecting records that will most accurately present the past to the future.
Throughout the history of the profession, archivists have provided access to the wealth of information they steward. Archivists are responsible for promoting the use of records; this is a fundamental purpose of the keeping of archives.
The decisions archivists make about what evidence is saved and what is discarded shape cultural memory. The nature of the historical record is formed not only by the actions of archivists but also by the public’s ability to access this information.
Archival management originated in the 1930s with the establishment of the National Archives and the Society for American Archivists, as well as the Historical Records Survey (HRS) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
The subsequent evolvement of records management as a specialized enterprise occurred in the 1950s. The expanse of governmental activity and its subsequent records spurred a need to reduce the number of records while retaining the quality of records of enduring value.
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The role of archivists has always been in flux, responding to the needs of the information world and providing the unique skill sets that librarians, historians, and records managers may understand but do not hold. Archivists are colleagues to librarians, historians, and records managers, but are a distinct class unto themselves.
The ability to automatically categorize records is very powerful, but autocategorization is not well understood and needs to be executed properly if it is to succeed. Autocategorization “attempts to assign electronic records to either predefined file structures or to self-defined categories through computer-based processes” (Lubbes 2003, 60).
