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Practice & workflow assessment

Overview
Tracking processing metrics (basic information about processing projects and the time spent on them) can help to estimate the time and cost of future processing projects, advocate for the resources necessary to process collections, and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of local processing practices.

Suggested data to collect  (for each collection/processing project)
Collection/project tracking involves recording information about the approach taken for a given collection or processing project.  At the most basic level, if data on the total length of the processing project and the collection volume is tracked, it can be used to calculate the average amount of time it takes to process collections (for example, the number of linear or cubic feet per week), which will enable staff to form a basic (but informed) idea of how long it will take to process future collections based on their size. This approach works best for linear, focused processing projects that do not have many significant breaks in the workflow. 

  • Title
  • Identifier
  • Date range
  • Collection extent (both “start” and “finish” extents, for both physical and digital volume)
  • Start date and end date of processing project

Because the size, scope, and complexity of collections can vary widely, tracking information about these other variables can help staff make more accurate time and expense estimates because they can determine the time and costs required to process a collection of a certain type (considering complexity, staffing available, format-based needs, etc). 

  • Complexity level of collection: this is the perceived amount of effort and time required to arrange and describe a collection (see example complexity scale in the Assessment Toolkit)
  • The level of processing to be performed (see Processing Levels) 
  • Staffing assigned to the project (full time/half time, use of interns, etc)
  • Presence and volume of special formats such as audio-visual and electronic media

Tracking the time spent on discrete processing tasks can help you to better understand and evaluate overall processing workflows, and better communicate to donors and resource allocators the cost of processing in terms of the specific activities and specialized skills required.

Record time spent (to the quarter hour) on discrete processing tasks:

  • Surveying and planning
  • Rehousing (refoldering, reboxing, etc)
  • Inventorying
  • Physical arrangement
  • Preservation activities
  • Digital processing (disk imaging, extracting use copies, analysis, etc)
  • Description: finding aid authoring
  • Description: MARC record creation
  • Box labeling and barcoding
  • Encoding in EAD and/or data entry/ingest into ArchivesSpace