Acquistion is the process of accepting archive material into your possession (and therefore stewardship of that material). Remembering that when you accept a donation, transfer, purchase or loan to the archive you are now the steward of its ongoing care and all costs attributed to it. This stewardship endures far beyond your period of time with them.
To undertake the acquisition process we must first go back to the beginning. This step in the art of archiving is possibly one of the most important and, I would suggest, one of the most difficult. Saying yes or no to an offer of archive material.
Why would we say “no” to an offer?
One word – purpose. Does the material meet the purpose of the archive? You will only know this if you have some key planning documents already in place prior to acquisition.
Whether you are a public, private or corporate archive having an Archive Policy is a key starting point. This policy defines the purpose, goals, responsibilities and, the types of materials, to be collected for the archive. It does not need to be a long winded document but it should set out clearly the expectations and purpose of the archive.
As a minimum your Archive Policy should include:
- The purpose of your archive – why do you exist?
- What type of archive it is e.g. private, public, corporate
- Where you will source your archive material from
- Types of control over the archives i.e. will you take loans, donations, transfers and what is the control the archive has over the materials
- How they will be stored and cared for
- How the archive is funded
- Access conditions – who will they be used by and under what conditions e.g. charges, opening times, assistance available
With an Archive Policy in place the ability to determine what is and is not appropriate for the archive should be more clear. If the purpose of the archive is to collect maps and plans of the district and someone presents a number of maps of another district to you then a quick reference to your Archive Policy should sort the answer out for you.
I know from personal experience that a policy is one thing, the desire to say yes to really interesting materials that don’t fit your policy is another. Hence, knowing other archival contacts and what their archive policies entail is a great tool to have in hand for referrals. That will be yet another article.
In the meantime, get to know what the purpose of your archive is and start putting it down in a policy.
Now that you know the material offered to your archive does meet your Archive Policy ideally we would like to appraise the materials before accepting them into your possession.
The ability to appraise prior to acquisition is the preferred method as experience has shown me that returning material you do not require is often problematic. This can be avoided with a simple Deposit Agreement.
At any point you decide to accept the archive material you should have a signed Deposit Agreement with the current owner. This will outline some key information and expectations:
- when it was transferred to the archive,
- the owners contact details,
- how much there is,
- who/what created it,
- conditions of ownership e.g. loan, donation, transfer, purchase
- conditions of use e.g. copyright, confidentiality
- and what will happen to the material should you decide it is not (or no longer) required in the archive
So you said yes – now what? If you haven’t done it already, then our next step is Appraisal.
Recognition: Just say no by Andy Tootell, licensed under Creative Commons Zero, published with thanks from www.arcavee.com
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