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Rare Book School
Preliminary Reading List

Introduction to Archives for Rare Book Librarians

Preliminary Advices

Required Reading

Read these before coming to Charlottesville. They will provide important contextual information for the course content. Many items are available from the SAA online publications catalog.

  1. Please acquire your own copy of this Society of American Archivists (SAA) manual, read it, and bring it to class.
  2. In addition, consider purchasing the following anthology, which includes three of the required readings as well as many other seminal articles (all of which we recommend to you as worthwhile).
    • Jimerson, Randall C., ed. American Archival Studies: Readings in Theory and Practice. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2000.
      1. Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2004. Read introductory material (pp. v-xxi) and Chapter 1 (pp. 7-11). If you don't have access to a copy of DACS, e-mail Bill Landis ( ), and he will send you copies of these sections.
      2. Greene, Mark. “‘The Surest Proof’: A Utilitarian Approach to Appraisal.” Archivaria 45 (Spring 1998), 127-169. Reprinted in Jimerson, 301-342.
      3. Hirtle, Peter B. “Archives or Assets?” The American Archivist 66 (Fall/Winter 2003), 235-247. This article is also available online.
      4. Michelson, Avra. “Description and Reference in the Age of Automation.” The American Archivist 50 (Spring 1987), 192-208. Reprinted in Jimerson, 361-379.
      5. Samuels, Helen Willa. “Who Controls the Past?” The American Archivist 49 (Spring 1986), 109-124. Reprinted in Jimerson, 193-210.

Recommended Reading

Read these if you have time, before or after the course.

Professional context

  1. Fleckner, John A. “‘Dear Mary Jane’: Some Reflections on Being an Archivist.” The American Archivist 54 (Winter 1991), 8-13. Reprinted in Jimerson, 21-28.
  2. Jimerson, Randall C. “Embracing the Power of Archives.” The American Archivist 69 (Spring/Summer 2006), 19-32.

Collection development and appraisal

  1. Hyry, Tom, Diane Kaplan, and Christine Weideman. “‘Though This Be Madness, yet There Is Method in ‘t’: Assessing the Value of Faculty Papers and Defining a Collecting Policy.” The American Archivist 65 (Spring/Summer 2002), 56-69.
  2. Swain, Ellen D. “Oral History and the Archives: Its Documentary Role in the 21st Century.” The American Archivist 66 (Spring/Summer 2003), 139-158.

Processing and description

  1. Greene, Mark A. and Dennis Meissner. “More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing. ” The American Archivist 68 (Fall/Winter 2005), 208-263.  Highly influential research study on ways to make archival processing more cost effective.  Has its own acronym: MPLP.
  2. Hensen, Steven L. “Squaring the Circle: The Reformation of Archival Description in AACR2. ” Library Trends 36 (Winter 1988), 539-552.
  3. MacNeil, Heather. “Picking Our Text: Archival Description, Authenticity, and the Archivist as Editor. ” The American Archivist 68 (Fall/Winter 2005), 264-278.
  4. McCrea, Donna E. “Getting More for Less: Testing a New Processing Model at the University of Montana. ” The American Archivist 69 (Fall/Winter 2006), 284-290.  An implementation of MPLP. [see no. 2 above]
  5. Pitti, Daniel V. “Encoded Archival Description: The Development of an Encoding Standard for Archival Finding Aids. ” The American Archivist 60 (summer 1997), 268-283, reprinted in Jimerson, 395-416.
  6. Weideman, Christine. “Accessioning as Processing. ” The American Archivist 69 (Fall/Winter 2006), 274-283.  An implementation of MPLP.
  7. Working Group on Standards for Archival Description. Report and recommendations of the working group. The American Archivist 52 (Fall 1989), 440-477.  Seminal work establishing the groundwork for recognition of the importance of standards for the archival profession.

Reference and outreach

  1. Pugh, Mary Jo. “The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist.” The American Archivist 45 (Winter 1982), 33-44.