Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts

By: Dennis Meissner

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Synopsis: Arrangement and description lie at the very heart of the archival endeavor. While all archival functions are crucial and interdependent, arrangement and description transform the potential value of materials into practical, usable value for researchers and others. In this book, the author provides a solid foundation in the history, theory, and standards supporting arrangement and description. In addition, he clearly demonstrates the approaches, methods, and mechanics required to process archival collections. The processing landscape has changed considerably in the last decade: archivists focus more on the economics of processing, descriptive standards have matured and increased in number, new technologies and viewpoints have challenged long-standing assumptions, and evolving systems and software have changed the mechanics of metadata capture and serialization and our approaches to those fundamental processes. This is a must-read book for every archivist practicing today.