1. Accessioning Collections
Digital Stewardship Curriculum

2. Consider… How do collections come into your institution?
What are the first steps you take?
Write down your answers to these questions to form a starting place to go from on the topic of Accessioning

3. Definition
Accessioning: The legal transfer of responsibility for the physical and intellectual care of the material.
The material, called an accession, gets a unique identifying number.
All collections, whether donated, purchased or transferred, are accessioned.
The first step in getting the collection into your TALM, and documented. First steps in description.

4. The Accession Process
Once you accept a collection through legal transfer (deed of gift)
Give an accession number
Ex:
Common form is the year it is accepted, and sequential number in the order it is acquired

5. The Accession Process Put material in a new box, other housing
Identify obvious preservation problems
Create an inventory

6. The Accession Process May have multiple accessions for one collection
Make sure each addition is documented!
Deal with any restriction issues
Have a set Deed of Gift form for donations
-Can be important for the story of the collection.
-Make sure the person donating has the permission to donate, and that they will be okay to have the whole collection open to the public - if not what restrictions?
-Deed of Gift can look like in the next session, important to have a standard form/procedure for dealing with donors

7. Discuss
When getting collections from donors, what levels of access or sensitivities are you dealing with?
How do you deal with those requests or sensitive items?
5 minutes, then share

8. Accessioning: physical and digital
Digital files can’t wait on a shelf as well as other collections- prioritize!
Digital types: Born digital and digitized
Important step, even if you don’t have time to fully process collections - get it a number, some brief description in the accession form.
Especially digital, really easy to let things get out of control, doing these steps will help you have better control over collections.

9. If you get the accessioning step done - you at least know what you have
Images for cd, floppy disc, flash drive, hard drive, remotely uploaded?
Images: loc.gov, iconfinder.com

10. accessioning falls in the get it stage of a Digital Stewardship Lifecycle
get it - bring materials into your institution (donations, collecting, scanning documents at another institution)
check-it - check and manage - check for quality, description. make sure they come in safely - make sure they stay safe/intact.
save it - secure storage, suited to your size requirements, with potential to grow - systematically backed up (multiple copies in multiple locations), meaningful organization
share it - providing access ti materials - online, exhibits, education, research

11. Digital Lifecycle Get it Check it (flag issues, inventory)
Accessioning is the first step in multiple functions of the digital lifecycle.
Accessioning is the “Get It” of the digital lifecycle and partially the “Check it”

12. Documentation examples
Accession forms:
Standard
Photographs
Digital

13. Webster Collection Follow worksheet
Fill out accession form for the collection
Create an accession number and label the box