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Processing Q - Summary



All,

Most of the responses I got were offlist, so I'll summarize.

There's consensus - two of them.  I got an equal number of responses from
those saying "file 'em by facility" and "leave them by office of
origination".

Despite some valid arguments on the other side, I've decided (I think) to
separate them based on facility.  I recognize the validity of provenance &
original order, but I've never liked the idea of letting those hinder the
research process.  Bottom line, in my experience I've never, I mean NEVER
had somebody ask me for the history of the department that puts out press
releases.  Right or wrong, most users of this kind of archival material are
interested in the information within; they come to me asking for information
on the program announced, the individual promoted, or the event held as
written in the release.  In fact, most of the time I've never been asked for
the releases in particular, I'm always asked "can you find out when X
happened", and left to my own designs I go to the releases as my first
source of information.

Some mentioned the importance of the central office to the mission of the
institution, and I will respond by pointing out that the central office only
came into existence 2-3 years ago; prior to that, each facility had its own
office, & produced their own materials.  I'd like to avoid having
researchers search one location for releases up to 1998, then the other for
after, especially if they will then have to dig through every other
facility's as well.  Granted they could be indexed, but to me that means
more work rather than less; given that I have lists of the releases put out
by the central office, I think I've got their efforts at least acknowledged
if anybody is that curious.  On top of that, my database guide to the
collection has a field for office of origin, so I don't think we'll lose of
sight of where it all came from.

A few people pointed out the problem of multiple institutions in one
release, which I am (for the moment) inelegantly dealing with by separating
the releases based on the letterhead.  If necessary, as many suggested, I
will make copies of a release & file them with each facility.  I've decided
not to copy all the releases to avoid unnecessary duplication; given that I
have some long range plans to scan all the releases and make them searchable
PDFs anyway, this whole discussion may be somewhat moot anyway.

Thanks to all, and we'll see if I'm making the right choice.

DS
______________________________________
Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
David Taylor Archives
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
155 Community Drive
Great Neck, NY 11021
mailto:dsokolow@nshs.edu

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