Taking it Further

Additional Activities

This section gives examples of more detailed activities that will help you to further clarify your mission and collecting policy, to gain better intellectual control over your collections, and/or to identify criteria for selecting collections for preservation. These activities will require additional time, research, and information-gathering on your part, and are completely optional.

Mission and Collecting Policy

• Write out a draft mission statement for the historical collection.
• Make a list of materials that need to be evaluated for possible deaccessioning.
• Contact other local repositories to determine whether they hold related collections.

Intellectual Control

• Group together materials created by the same individual, family, or organization into an archival collection.
• Create an initial inventory of collections with location information.
• Take a course or visit a Web site that teaches archival cataloging.

Selection for Preservation

• Devise criteria specific to your institution for identifying valuable collections that may be in need of preservation action.