MPLP: A Love Story

My first venture into the world of archives began in the summer (or late spring) of 2007. Preparing for an internship in the North Carolina Room/Local History Room/Special Collections Room (NCR) of the New Hanover County Public Library, I was tasked with processing a collection. But which collections would it be? My intern coordinator on campus and my supervisor in the NCR had their own ideas. One project was three to four boxes and would take under a month to complete. There was another collection however, which took up 60 file boxes...

Naturally, my superiors elected to assign me the latter--and I am glad they did. From start to finish, processing the collection took approximately 15 months. Along the way, I continued working through graduate school, studying for the comprehensive exam, foreign language exam, worked as a teaching assistant, and used the information found in the collection as the basis for my thesis ( http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncw/f/shahs2008-1.pdf).

The collection itself was fairly organized, but weeding, rehousing, and cataloging were required. The survey or appraisal process took approximately three weeks. After an initial survey of the collection (which left me feeling a bit overwhelmed), a second, shorter survey was conducted to develop a better sense of familiarity and grasp the context of the collection.

When it arrived, the collection came in 60 boxes.

Some boxes contained no clear organization.

After creating a rough list for the contents of the collection, I proceeded to work box-by-box, beginning with organization and committees (minutes, annual reports, etc.) and then followed by the general collection, which was in alphabetical order. Initially, I tried to adhere to the key step for rehousing and archiving materials (remove corrosive elements like staples and paperclips and unfolding folded materials). After the second month, however, I realized that both the NCR's resources and my time would be better spent if I just focused on cleaning, organizing, and rehousing the records in acid-free folders and cataloging them in the blossoming finding aid.

As my mentor pointed out, the key was creating a usable finding aid and making the collection accessible to researchers. As an intern, I was putting in about 20 hours a week and could not dedicate more time than that, and if I wanted to finish the project and graduate on time, then I needed to focus on what was important: making the collection available. Later, while pursuing my master's in library and information science, I would learn that such practice was referred to a "More Product, Less Process" or MPLP. At the time, I just felt guilty--because it seemed like I was cutting corners to get the job done.

What should my priorities be? The first was to finish the project. That was paramount. While my internship effectively ended at the end of the summer of 2007 (at least in terms of receiving a grade), I had not finished the project, and I continued with the work through to the fall of 2008. It was my white whale and my albatross. The longer I worked on the project, arranging, rehousing and cataloging records and documents, the better my understanding of the organization grew, and I saw how it connected with the city, history, architecture, economics, and politics. After discussing the topic with my mentor and university faculty, I decided to make the collection the focal point of my thesis.

Suddenly, there were deadlines. If my graduation was tied to my thesis, and my thesis was tied to the collection, then the sooner I finished processing the collection, the sooner I could complete my thesis and graduate. While this did not impact the quality of processing the collection, it did force me to speed up the pace of processing and fine-tune the weeding, rehousing, and cataloging steps.

MPLP is pragmatic. It is a compromise which addresses two issues faced by archivists and records managers working in archives, museums, libraries, and special collections: the finite amount of time and money with which they have to work. MPLP is an answer to a field that is becoming increasingly stretched in terms of resources.

Some may view the use of this practice as an unholy compromise that invalidates the very practice or integrity of the archival field, but there are two qualities which come to mind: preservation of records and access to records. Both are vital, but within the field, it is acknowledged that NOTHING LASTS FOREVER. Molecules break down and materials will deteriorate and decay and information will be lost. Giving that information structure/organization and making it accessible, while ensuring that it remains well-preserved are key. 

By September of 2008, I had completed work on the collection and the rough draft of the finding aid. Because of my familiarity with the collection, again, it proved to be central to my thesis, and much of the primary sources were drawn from reports, speeches, minutes, and letters, found in the DARE, Inc. Collection. My thesis was completed two months later and made available online in 2009. Since then, it's received over 1,200 views and has been cited by historians and referred to by city officials for planning and preservation purposes. Had I not followed practices of MPLP, then that knowledge would not have been made available.

Ultimately, the DARE, Inc. Collection, as an internship, and an experience in processing archives was excellent. I am reminded of how people described Stanley Kubrick as an obsessive perfectionist who was notorious for an insane number of shots and retakes to get that shot which best captured his vision. In response to his critics, Kubrick simply said that he put so much effort into it because he could not discern when he was loving a film too much or too little. It's about effort and dedication and seeing things through, but at some point, we all have to be satisfied with a final product and let go.

That said, I do look back on "my first" with some head-slapping. I wished I had used group and series level description when creating the finding aid. Something seemed amiss at the time, but chalk that down as a learning experience.