About the Collection Services Manual

• Introduction
• Table of contents
• Rose Library Collection Services documentation approval policy

Introduction

Placeholder for Carrie's introductory text

Table of contents

• 01: Overview of archival processing
• 02: Accessioning and precustodial work
• 03: Collection analysis
• 04: Levels of arrangement and description
• 05: Description
• 06: Local practice
• 07: Restriction and separation
• 08: Appraisal
• 09: Preservation
• 10: Project management
• 11: Assessment and reporting
• 12: Workplace and environment
• 13: Supplies
• 14: Packing and shipping
• 15: FedEx guidelines
• 16: LSC transfer policies and procedures
• 17: Formatting and style guide

Rose Library Collection Services documentation approval policy¹

Documentation created by the Collection Services department of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library includes the policies, workflows, processes, manuals, and forms that are integral to the operations of Collection Services and are intended for long-term use. In order for staff to control, use, and share this documentation, Collection Services is stored and maintained using GitHub. All documentation on the platform is publicly available.² This facilitates transparency and version control of our institutional processes, as well as an opportunity to share archival documentation with the larger archival community and other interested users.

This policy defines the process by which existing documentation is expanded and revised.

All public content is shared under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) public domain dedication.

Revising or removing documentation

It is expected and encouraged that documentation be reviewed and revised periodically to ensure that it is accurate and reflects current practice. All changes should be submitted through a pull request in the corresponding GitHub repository.

• Staff may commit changes directly to the master branch where revisions are very minor (e.g., small stylistic changes, minor corrections, etc.).

All other changes must be submitted via a pull request:

• If a staff member revises documentation following a broader Collection Services discussion or is the listed content owner of the documentation in question, they may merge the resulting pull request without further approval but are encouraged to invite at least one other member of staff to review their changes including, where appropriate, the listed content owner.
• Substantive changes should be reviewed and approved by at least one other member of staff including, where relevant, the listed content owner. Where required, review should take place within three working days of a request being made.
• If a determination is made to remove a piece of documentation in its entirety, notify any Collection Services team member with administrative access to the Collection Services GitHub account.

Refer to the Rose Library guide to GitHub for technical instructions (forthcoming) on how to revise existing Collection Services documentation stored in GitHub.

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Footnotes:

[1] Language and process borrowed in large part and with much gratitude from the Rockefeller Archive Center Documentation Site Content Approval Policy: http://docs.rockarch.org/docs-policy/

[2] In some cases, links from Collection Services repositories to information that cannot be shared publicly require authentication.