Processing by the numbers

Processing by the numbers:

How metrics can help with

project planning

Adrienne Pruitt, MSLIS, MA, Boston College October 27, 2012 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Session S18

Processing metrics

• Why to keep metrics

• How to keep metrics

• Trends and pitfalls

• Encouraging participation

“Statistical measures have a hardness about them – they demand attention, they just won’t go away, especially when they are published; and I think they should shake us up and . . . make us look more closely at what we are doing.” – Tom Wilsted, “Scoring Archival Goals,” 1977

“Clearly, our incompetence in the area of processing metrics greatly harms both our capacity to plan projects and granting agencies’ ability to fund them.” – Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, “More Product, Less Process,” 2005

Reasons to keep processing metrics

• More accurate – and likely to be funded – grant proposals

• Better budget justifications • Cost/benefit analysis • Work priorities • Assessment of processing

workflows • Donor relations • Benchmarking – in the archival

profession as a whole

https://wiki.med.harvard.edu/Countway/ArchivalCollaboratives/ ProcessingMetricsDatabase

Participation in the Processing Metrics Collaborative: Tracking Statistics in the Metrics Database

What we track: • Daily activities, by

employee, in 15 min. increments

• Time spent per series • Format by series and box

Define: • Complexity levels • Processing levels • Formats • Collection types • Tracking tasks

Tracking tasks: what and why

Charts by activity, by

collection, by month,

by processor, hours

by linear foot

Collection level reports Summarizes: • collection’s condition • collection type • format • complexity • processing level - things most likely to affect processing times

Things to watch out for

1. Start-up costs 2. Complexity and processing

levels 3. Time spent NOT processing 4. Standardization 5. Clear definitions 6. Cost vs. value 7. Staff implementation

“Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.” -William W. Watt

Linear footage wiki page

Oversize items, linear footage, and hours/linear foot

Promoting the keeping of metrics

Sources consulted • Ericksen, Paul. “Beneficial Shocks: The Place of Processing-Cost Analysis in Archival

Administration.” The American Archivist, 58, no. 1 (1995): 32-52. • Greene, Mark A. and Dennis Meissner. “More Product, Less Process: Revamping

Traditional Archival Processing.” The American Archivist, 68, no. 2 (2005): 208-263. • Gustainis, Emily. “Processing Metrics Collaborative: Database Development Initiative.”

Harvard Medical School Wiki. Accessed September 10, 2012. https://wiki.med.harvard.edu/Countway/ArchivalCollaboratives/ProcessingMetricsDatabase

• Gustainis, Emily. “The Way We Work.” NEA Newsletter, 38, no. 3 (2011): 4-6. • Mengel, Holly. “The Decision to Minimally Process Should be a Collection-by-Collection

Decision,” PACSCL Hidden Collections Processing Project (blog), January 27, 2012, http://clir.pacscl.org/2012/01/27/the-decision-to-minimally-process-should-be-a-collection-by-collection-decision/.

• Mengel, Holly and Courtney Smerz. “PACSCL Debriefing.” Presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, April 22, 2012.

• Turner, Adrian. “Project Tracking and Timeline.” Uncovering California’s Environmental Collections. February 23, 2012 (accessed September 10, 2012). https://wiki.ucop.edu/display/CLIR/Project+Tracking+and+Timeline

• Walters, Emily. “Changing the Landscape.” Accessed September 10, 2012. http://news.lib.ncsu.edu/changinglandscape/

Questions? [email protected]

www.slideshare.net/AdriennetheArchivist/