Daniel,
You received such good answers and Tara's seemed especially
good for your situation that I was not going to respond but since you said
you are still confused. . .
Let me say the reason you have so many different answers is
because there is not a one size fits all. Every institution, every archive, is
like a living organism. A system that works well in one place will not
necessarily be the best one for your archives. Each archive is different,
or unique, in its own way, and if you pay attention to it, it will more or
less tell you what you need to know.
Can you maintain provenance? Yes.
Public relations depts. I have worked with had "job jackets"
and everything was tied to specific events. All of the press releases and
other related documents and photographs (which would give you names, dates
and events to create an index) had either a job name or number or
both.
As others have said, cataloging a million photos is different
than several hundred.
Who uses the archives?
Probably not researchers as much as internal staff. More than
likely, the people that will be asking for those photos will be other public
relations staff and how will they ask for the photos? "Do you have
anything about the new chief of staff in 1969 at such and such? Do you have a
photo of x hospital at the time it was built? Before the new addition? After the
new addition? So and so is retiring do have a picture when he was on staff at
x?"
Respect pour les fonds and who and how the archives is used
tells you that you need to know the provenance (hospital, dept, event) for every
image. How you index will depend on how the archives is used (or more
specifically who and how they ask for the photographs) will tell you how
detailed an index you need.
The other factors that you need to consider, are you a one man
operation, are there other professionals or volunteers or interns?
I can not emphasize enough the KISS method. The best system in
the world is useless if no one has the time. And if you get just a little sloppy
because you don't have the time, or it goes on the processing shelf and stays
there forever, or the volunteers don't understand it after a month, well, it is
essentially useless.
For me personally, I have always worked with a minimal staff
(three or less -- usually less) and since I don't have a laptop on my hip (and
even if I did, I could never figure out how to merge databases from several
laptops into one database without screwing up the key ID numbers) and I
have found the paper system to be the most efficient and the quickest way
if you don't have the staff available for data entry.
And what if some of the hospitals are sold? The terms of sale
may or may not include related items in the archives.
I don't know if my $.02 helped. I know how much work it takes
to set up a good system.
Jackie S.
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