How archival processing metrics can help with project management

1. 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

2. Processing metrics
• Why to keep metrics
• How to keep metrics
• Trends and pitfalls
• Encouraging participation

3. “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

4. 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

5. Participation in
the Processing
Metrics
Collaborative:
Tracking
Statistics in the
Metrics
Database
https://wiki.med.harvard.edu/Countway/ArchivalCollaboratives/
ProcessingMetricsDatabase

6. 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

7. Tracking tasks: what and why

8. Charts by activity, by
collection, by month,
by processor, hours
by linear foot

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

10. Things to watch out for
1. Start-up costs
2. Complexity and processing
levels
“Do not put your faith in 3. Time spent NOT processing
what statistics say until 4. Standardization
you have carefully 5. Clear definitions
considered what they do 6. Cost vs. value
not say.” 7. Staff implementation
-William W. Watt

11. Linear footage wiki page

12. Oversize items, linear footage,
and hours/linear foot

13. Promoting the keeping of metrics

14. 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/ProcessingMetricsData
base
• 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? adrienne.pruitt@bc.edu
www.slideshare.net/AdriennetheArchivist/