GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Preface

The Archival Accessioning Best Practices provide principles that both guide accessioning activities undertaken by practitioners and serve as a framework for developing an institutional accessioning program.

Archival values such as access and use, responsible stewardship, and accountability inform these principles for archival accessioning. These fundamental assumptions recognize and uplift the often invisible labor involved in accessioning work. The principles represent an ethical baseline for archival accessioning, with the best practices elaborating on specific recommendations to carry out the values presented in these principles. By providing a baseline, these principles can be applied to measuring or updating existing accessioning policies and practices and developing new accessioning programs within institutions.

Principles

I. Accessioning is the leading indicator of a commitment to responsible stewardship.

• A successful accessioning program requires a thoughtful and thorough assessment of a repository’s resources, technologies, and labor to ensure both responsible stewardship and baseline control of acquired materials.

• The assessment of resources must be honest, as accessioning work can surface a mismatch between resources that are required and those that are available. A culture of planning and a deep understanding of staff workloads is needed.

II. A successful accessioning program provides a series of protective practices that collectively create a baseline of access, stability, and legal and ethical care. Effective accessioning fosters trust and strong relationships with creators and donors through clear, transparent, centralized information about archival interventions.

III. Accessioning is the optimal time to record custodial information about the collection and contextual information about the acquisition itself. It is also the point at which the most information about the materials—including information not present in the archival materials themselves—is available. Relying on memory or institutional knowledge rather than documenting information promptly, consistently, and in a reliable location exposes a repository to unnecessary risk.

IV. Accessioning work must be supported and built into the operational labor structure of the repository.

• Accessioning takes time. Archivists doing accessioning need the resources, especially time, to carry out accessioning tasks and create documentation.

• Archivists doing accessioning need power and agency to act on materials according to best practices. Archivists doing accessioning work need to be meaningfully involved in acquisition conversations from the beginning.

V. A permanent acquisitions program at a repository also requires a permanent accessioning program. Temporary or contingent labor is an unethical and unsustainable approach to persistent archival needs.

VI. Accessioning documentation is the most essential mechanism of accountability for decisions that resulted in acquisition, including why the materials were acquired and interventions made onto archival materials. Creating documentation is a shared responsibility between all parties involved in the acquisition and accessioning process.

VII. Accessioning should be transparent. Accessioning information is most useful when it is outward-facing. Ensuring this information is accessible to user communities offers a more universal sense of what is available in a repository.

VIII. It is never too late to accession. Use accessioning practices retrospectively to evaluate and improve control and stewardship of materials.