Doing More by Doing Less: Stopping Programs Without Regret #saa15 #s504 Merrilee Proffitt Sarah Dorpinghaus Rebecca Goldman Matt Francis Mary Jo Fairchild

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Reeling to the End: The conclusion of microfilm services at the University of Kentucky Libraries Sarah Dorpinghaus Digital Archivist UK Special Collections Research Center Security Pacific National Bank Collection. "Newspaper Room microfilm readers, Los Angeles Public Library” Los Angeles Public Library.Accessed August Room microfilm readers, Los Angeles Public Library

Newspaper images courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center

Expensive Inefficient

Efficient

Potential

Growth

Opportunity for change What took so long? Strong digitization program Receptive administration

Reassurance + Customer Service Barker and Faulconer Fayette County Public Education photographs. “Student working in store, 1941” University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.

[Photograph of Microfilm Boxes], February 1973; ( accessed August 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Abilene Christian University Library, Abilene, Texas.

George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. "Microfilm camera." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 3,

The Great Processing Freeze of 2014 Matt Francis August 21, 2015

Why a processing freeze? Special Collections Library reorganization Free up resources for other projects: –ArchivesSpace –Collections data auditing and review –Collection assessment work There were exceptions to the freeze

An Early Frost August 2014 –Processing projects wound down –Freeze data in Archivists’ Toolkit September 2014 –Special Collections Library reorganizes –Includes the creation of new Collections Management Unit

What we worked on: Part I ©Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Building a new team

What we worked on: Part II Collection Assessment

What we worked on: Part III Collection Management System Migration

What we worked on: Part IV Other projects: –Ongoing accessioning –Creation of EAD records from MARC records for small collections –Support for other collections related tasks

A slow thaw… February 2015 – Limited processing work begins April 2015 – Return to “normal” processing load

Conclusions The Positives: +(Mostly) Successful migration +Data improvements allowed better support of Aeon implementation +Collection assessment +No angry donors +Team came together

Conclusions And the things that didn’t work quite as well as hoped: –Not a clean relaunch –Slowness in opening up ArchivesSpace to non-Collection Management staff. –Despite metadata improvements, still not where we need it to be.

THANK YOU

Creating a Resource Sharing Partnership: Relocation of the South Carolina Historical Society Archives to the College of Charleston

Project Management and Personnel Delegation

Minimizing Competition for Resources

Maintaining Unique Institutional Identities

Users and Public Perception