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Post #2: Intellectual Processing and Organizing in the Archive

 

This week, I was again educated on an interesting term used in archival spheres via Terry Cook’s What is Past is Prologue and through class discussion. The term, “intellectual processing,” is used when an archivist configures mentally how items were organized in the archive before it was physically removed/placed in another space due to context, interrelationships, functionality, and other means related to the content of the record.[1] Not having very much archival experience aside from the occasional in-person research trip (much more common pre-COVID-19), I speculate that this strategy can be very helpful when an archivist might need to remove an item from a folder or another object for a variety of reasons, but they can still recollect where that item is meant to be or can be repositioned if necessary. Now that I currently work as a researcher for the JDP, I might even come across this process here as I learn more about what the JDP has in store for me as an Inclusive History Researcher and as they continue to open their archive up to the public. I would also think that intellectual processing could be a way to prevent or track theft that may occur in an archive, which as I had mentioned in my “Archives and Manuscripts” course this Tuesday is something that can happen within a myriad of archives and repositories. On opening more research opportunities to the public, the discussion which my classmates and I had about making research items accessible to the public was an extremely insightful one, as it is arguably a universal notion (for many researchers) to want to navigate through and understand an archive (whether in physical or digital format) with ease. For instance, elaborating more on a picture found on a digital platform can be helpful for a researcher who may be on a time crunch in the archive and who only wants to view pictures extremely relevant to their research. By further detailing this photograph, the archive can help researchers pinpoint what they can potentially use in future research. The same strategy can be used for documents and other items available at an archive.


[1] Terry Cook, “What’s Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift,”  http://www.mybestdocs.com/cookt-pastprologue-ar43fnl.htm (Links to an external site.) (originally in Archivaria, spring 1997).

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