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Re: 1 box = ? linear feet



I've debated with myself over whether or not I wanted to enter in this discussion and have decided to do so.  

Technicqally speaking the only way you could have a cubic foot of records in a standard cubic foot records container would be to have paper cut to !2" X 15" or 10" X 15" or 10" X 12" and them lay the larger size flat in the box until it is completely full or stand the other two sizes on edge until the box is completely full.  Putting 8.5" X 11" or 8.5" X 14" or smaller size documents would logically never create a cubic foot of records as the box would never be completely full.  What does it tell a researcher when you record your records in cubic feet.

Trying to measure the cubic footages of oversize materials is even more difficult.  I presume that you could calculate the cubic footage of 50 ledgers that measure say 14" X 24" inches, but what would that tell you or a researcher.  It is my strong feeling that a researcher would be much more interested in the number of volumes of ledgers and the years they cover than how many cubic feet of them there are.

Linear feet is not really much better.  A standard cubic foot records box will hole one foot of letter size or smaller records and 1.25 feet of legal size or smaller records.  Depending upon which way you place the boxes on the shelves, they will take up l or 1.25 feet of shelf space.  With large ledgers standing them on end seems to take up less shelf space except that standing up they take two or three shelves.  Thus 1 foot of shelf space would really be two or three feet.  Lying flat on the shelves leaves a lot of space on every shelf as few of them are as tall as 36".

It seems to me that what is really needed to know about a collection for internal purposes is how many feet of shelf space is taken up by a particular collection.  We all have a finite amount of such space.  The more efficiently we use it the longer it will last.

I am not sure if they still do so, but the archivists at the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University used to count the number of leaves in every one of their collections.  That probably gave users or potential users the best information about how small or large a collection is, but as far as I know no archives other than Texas Tech ever did that, at least during the past 30 years.

While is would be potentially usefull for cmparison of size of holdings issues for every archives to use the same procedure for determining and reporting the size of every collection, but I doubt that information would be of interest to researchers.  

Based upon my own research as well as assisting researchers over a goodly number of years, what researchers really want to know is do you have papers or a particular individual or records of a particular orgnaization, what years do they cover, what types of records exist, are they available for use, and last of all how much stuff is there.  More and more they want to know if the material is available on the internet, and if not, when will it be.

I guess the sum of all of this is that I fail to see any reason to worry about how we calculate the size of a collection.  Give the researcher some basic information on that matter and provide as much information as you possibly can on what information is contained in the records.

 

Charles R. Schultz, CA
Professor and Clements Archivist
Cushing Library
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-5000
c-schultz@tamu.edu
979-862-1555
FAX 979-845-1441

State-of-the-art automation will never beat the wastebasket 
when it comes to speeding up efficiency in the office.
Ann Landers Gem of the Day, July 27, 1994

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