This study looks at the usefulness of Dublin Core metadata in digitized image collections from the user's perspective. Are there elements that users don't find useful? Do users feel useful information is missing? Are labels and elements provided for users arranged in a way that makes sense to them? This paper uses a survey, focus groups, and search/usability testing to gain insight into the kinds of information nonexpert users rely on when searching for images and to identify the vocabulary that best expresses that information.

This study compares the roles of Buddhist monks in medieval Korea and Christian monks in medieval Europe in the development and management of archives. Buddhist and Christian monks and monasteries played similar roles in preserving both religious and secular texts, but the archival role of Christian monks was limited to monastic archives, whereas Buddhist monks were integral to the management of both monastic and secular archives. The establishment early in the Koryo dynasty (918-1392) of a centralized bureaucratic system required a centralized archival system, of which monastic archives were one branch. These monastic archives were managed by one of the major government departments of the secular authority and by Buddhist officials, who consisted largely of Buddhist monks. The findings of this study suggest that different political and social structures in medieval Korea and Europe, as well as the differing religious philosophies and cultures of Buddhism and Christianity, resulted in divergent archival development in the two societies.

This paper examines the development of ethnic and immigrant archives in the United States since the 1960s. It focuses on the dramatic evolution of "ethnic archiving"—the processes and objectives involved in documenting the immigrant and ethnic experience—and shows how cultural minorities evolved from an object or theme of archival collections to active participants in the creation, appraisal, description, and use of their own archives. A number of factors made this evolution possible: a new political context increasingly responsive to minority rights and cultural diversity, rising interest in social history, and the influence of postmodernist thought on archival theory. New digital technologies have also facilitated the expression and archiving of ethnic voices.

This article reports on findings from a research project investigating patterns in practices among North American college and university archives and records management programs regarding their approaches to capturing, storing, organizing, and making available institutional electronic records. The project seeks to provide a picture of the state of the field for archivists in colleges and universities. Initially funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission's (NHPRC) Electronic Records Fellowship Program, the study collected data in 2005 from 193 institutions through an online survey administered to 638 archivists and records managers. The survey was followed by interviews with archivists at 20 institutions to explore in depth the development and implementation of their programs. In 2009, a second online survey was sent to the 193 institutions responding in 2005 to identify what changes, if any, had occurred over the four-year period. Sixty-five percent (126) of the original 193 institutions updated their 2005 data, and the results suggest relatively little change in the development of ERM programs over the past four years.

This article is a critical examination of the methodology and arguments of Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner's influential article "More Product, Less Process." Greene and Meissner rely heavily on data from a survey of the profession's processing habits, which is skewed to manuscript repositories at colleges and universities rather than institutional archives. This article also examines untested assumptions underlying their arguments, reflects on why manuscript repositories resist change, and questions the wisdom of a standard metric for large manuscript collections. It asks whether "More Product, Less Process" addresses the critical issues facing manuscript repositories.

Processing is at the heart of what we do as archivists but has been one of the most under-analyzed aspects of our work, particularly in its relationship to access. This article describes and analyzes the ways in which current processing techniques affect access at college and university archives. The analysis shows that paper-based processing backlogs are not correlated to the application of intensive processing techniques and that they are only mildly correlated to the application of complex descriptive technologies. Many institutions have not made as much descriptive information available online as might be desirable, and few institutions are actively soliciting or processing electronic records. While these problems may seem intractable, some institutions have made remarkable progress in providing effective processing and descriptive programs and in developing associated access tools. This article suggests specific ways that we can learn from their successes. The profession as a whole has a responsibility to help all institutions use proven management techniques and easy-to-implement descriptive tools, so that the universe of archival materials that is held by all repositories may be more accessible to users.

Amid the surprising attention given to the article "More Product, Less Process," several colleagues commented that the role of appraisal was missing in our consideration of the problem of backlogs. While this was a deliberate exclusion at the time, it seems appropriate and necessary to address not only the application of MPLP to appraisal but also to other aspects of archival administration, specifically preservation, reference, electronic records, and digitization. This article, however, is an opinion piece rather than a research article, thus it lacks the level of detail present in the original article.

This case study describes Water Tables, a successful fund-raising event held annually to benefit the Water Resources Archive at the Colorado State University Libraries. The Archive works to "provide access to, promote and preserve the water heritage of Colorado." The article describes the event concept and goals with some of the event highlights. The most important components for creating this successful fund-raiser include an enthusiastic committee of local water professionals with a wide network of contacts, committed event underwriters, and the use of archival documents to engage the attendees and bring the past into the present.

On 26 September 2008, the University of Mississippi hosted the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. This case study describes the wide variety of programming and resources developed by the Archives and Special Collections to coincide with this historic occasion. It identifies objectives, outlines assessment, and discusses lessons learned that have implications for any large-scale programming efforts.

Digitization is widely recognized as an access tool for archival materials, but it is not universally accepted as a preservation method. In certain cases, however, digitization is the most feasible option for recovering and preserving content. Acetate photographic negatives are a case in point. Deteriorated negatives off-gas acetic acid resulting in warping and shrinkage that can cause severe damage. It can be difficult and expensive to salvage the information content of the images using traditional photographic methods. This article examines the decision made at the University of Southern Mississippi to use digitization as a preservation strategy to capture the visual content from highly damaged acetate negatives.