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Business name changes and collection titles



I agree with Kit Leary.  I would like to remind you gently that not all members of this list are working in a university library.  A cataloging entry is not specific enough for me to find what I am looking for in this archives. A very large hospital/medical research facility with branches in various geographic locations is more akin to a big corporation than a university library, and the users of the finding aids are the archivists. Executive administration , who are our end users, are not about to trek into the archives to pore over finding aids, or even look them up on the computer.  They call (actually, they have their secretaries call) for information, and our mission is to find it quickly.  Cataloging is not a  top priority here, or even a priority, in a (OK, let's say it) business situation.  Consistency is fine and would be ideal, but the archivist's mission is to find the information, and quickly.  This means having finding aids with every known variant of a name, and it doesn't matter much which name you use as the official title of the collection, as long as you can get from one to the other.   I too rely on rules when I need to, but nomenclature is so fast-changing (both in the medical world and inside the specific institution) that trying to keep it all under control is a major and continual task and calls for all sorts of solutions.  What the administrators and the legal department call something is vastly more important than what the archivist thinks it should be called.  We too have formerly independent institutions which have to be identified within our present framework, and every one of them has several names (at least), some of which are just word-of-mouth and not in the least official, but which have to be points of access.  In a place like this, where employees are coming and going with more frequency every year, we are more truly the institutional memory the longer time goes on, and are expected to know everything about everything, since people can no longer go to someone down the hall and get particulars for anything more than a couple years old (if that).  It seems we get further and further from the possibility of running a perfect 'textbook' archives the way we were taught.

By the way, I too have a library degree - as well as an MA in history, from the Case Western Reserve archival administration program (may it rest in peace!).  What I learned in school is the basis of my work, but it has had to be modified in all sorts of ways to fit the real world.

Fred Lautzenheiser
Cleveland Clinic Foundation

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