Archivists should increase the number of access points to their materials to help users navigate their collections.
Description combines traditional archival practices with visual resource communities’ more focused descriptive methods.
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.
Appraisal involves choosing which records to preserve based on their long-term value and relevance to the archives’ mission. This process requires archivists to balance users’ immediate needs with the potential future significance of records.
Archival repositories can generate surrogates for various purposes, such as PDFs for print reproduction, JPEGs for online display, and TIFFs for storage.
The hundredth copy of a digital image is indistinguishable from its progenitors. Electronic copies suffer no degradation through the duplication process, unlike other forms of copying, such as facsimiles. A copy of a digital image is indistinguishable from its source, while the original can lose its meaning in this electronic world.