Toward Common Content: An Analysis of Online College and University Collecting Policies

Collecting policies have been advocated as tools to help archivists build stronger collections. The model proposed by Faye Phillips in 1984 is the most detailed framework for collecting policies in the archival literature. This paper presents the results of a pilot study of the collecting policies of college and university archives available online to investigate whether a consensus has been reached about the content of these documents. Future studies of this kind for other types of archives could facilitate the identification, refinement, and dissemination of professional best practice and standards for collecting policies.