Introduction by Kate McNally, University Records Manager and Archivist
At TARC, we are always receiving new materials for our collections. Whether they are transferred from university departments, donated by alumni or student organizations, or gifted by the representatives of the numerous figures and organizations whose private papers we preserve – the accessions never stop coming. An “accession” simply refers to a group of records transferred by a donor or University department at one time, and can be any size, from 35 boxes of office files to a single yearbook, or even 10 MB of digital photographs. In fiscal year 2025, TARC received 78 new accessions, which works out to more than one per week! And each one must be physically stabilized and added to our online collections database to ensure they are discoverable by researchers (a workflow that archivists refer to as “processing”). In order to keep on top of the influx, we have adopted an “extensible processing” model at TARC. This means that within a short time after arriving at the Archives, a new accession will have the minimum amount (and no more than that) of work done to it to make it physically accessible and a baseline description added to the database so that researchers can find it online. Our method is “extensible,” because we focus on doing a baseline level of processing at the time of accessioning, which can always be scaled up at a later date if usage statistics indicate that it is necessary.
During the pandemic, and the resulting months of remote work, any processing of physical collections became difficult to accomplish due to the absence of staff from campus. This led to the development of a small backlog of accessions that had built up since the pandemic, and which staff has been chipping away at in subsequent years. In the summer of 2025, we planned a project that would eliminate this backlog and allow us to completely focus on addressing incoming donations as they arrive. The project was planned and led by Kate McNally, University Records Manager and Archivist, in conjunction with Dan Santamaria, TARC’s Director. In addition to Kate, the team’s main processors included Hayley Mercer, Records and Accessioning Archivist, Annalise Poisson, Collections and Research Assistant, and Nora Soto, Processing and Digital Archivist.
In planning this work, we began by establishing project-specific metrics that would allow us to both decide the level of processing work to be done to each accession and to estimate the time it would take to do that work. The metrics we used for this were adapted from those in UC Irvine’s Special Collections and Archives Processing Manual and combined with TARC’s own processing level guidelines. Then, the project list underwent multiple rounds of review to assign levels of work and an estimated completion time to each accession so that a schedule could be developed. It was also decided that only physical materials would be addressed at this time, while digital accessions would be addressed as part of a subsequent project. Finally, a “process to the clock” order was assigned to certain accessions – this is a technique in which a certain amount of time is allotted to process an accession and whatever work is possible in that amount of time is all that is done. The final schedule planned for two weeks of full-time work on forty small accessions by two members of the processing team, while another person focused solely on the largest outstanding accession, and the other team member balanced processing with other duties. The subsequent six weeks of the project followed the same pattern, save that all members of the team returned to regular reference and departmental duties in addition to processing.
Throughout the project, each processor was asked to record the amount of time spent processing each accession, in order to finish the project with a better sense of the department’s processing rates. In the end, the team was able to address 213 linear feet of records in approximately 8 weeks of work. Over the course of the project, 38 existing collections were added to, and 18 new collections were published for the first time. We were also successful in establishing working processing rates for physical materials which can be utilized in planning future projects. The project was not only successful in reducing the accession backlog and productive in establishing metrics for future work, but it was also extremely rewarding to help bring our accessioning workload back to a stable baseline and to ensure all of our collections can be found and requested online.
Continue reading below for some reflections from members of the processing team!
Annalise Poisson, Collections and Research Assistant
The backlog project was one of the first projects I worked on as the new Collections and Research Assistant here at TARC! Previously as a student worker, I mainly helped with stabilizing physical records for larger collections, but often times I did not know what happened to a collection after I stabilized it. With the backlog project, I was able to work with a collection all the way from start to finish. I stabilized and rehoused records, created finding aids, and then was able to post the finding aids to our online database for researchers to use! For the most part, I helped out with the smaller accessions. These were either one or two boxes that were going to be added to an existing collection or a small accession that warranted a new collection.
One of my favorite collections I worked on was the Marston Balch Papers. Marston Balch was a Tufts faculty member from 1938 – 1971. He was the director of the drama department, executive director of the Tufts College Theater, and advisor to Tufts’ Pen, Paint and Pretzels club. Under his leadership, Tufts’ drama program flourished. This collection was really fun for me to process because it contains a lot of material from Balch’s time serving in France during WWII, an era of history I am particularly interested in. Balch was certainly not your average theater faculty member! This collection contains newspapers, flyers, and travel documents all relating to Balch’s time fighting for freedom in France during WWII. The collection also includes some theater publications and materials from Pen, Paint and Pretzels. It is an interesting mix of history, and it was fun to find commonalities between materials to create series level descriptions for this collection. To me, this collection really highlights the diversity of our collections here at TARC. We don’t just hold Tufts’ history; we hold world history too!
Another collection I worked on was the Rocky Carzo Papers. Rocky Carzo was a beloved athletic director at Tufts, and we were all really excited by the opportunity to process his papers. This collection contains some large photographs and memorabilia in addition to written records. It includes documentation of Carzo’s research into Tufts participation in what he argues is the first game of American football as well as photos we used for a recent blog post about the 1975 World Series among many other records. This collection was processed at the box level, which means that each entry in the finding aid represents the materials found in each box, rather than a specific folder in that box. Since this collection is about 44.5 linear feet, processing it at the box level ensured that we were able to make it available to researchers quickly. In fact, we’ve had researchers request to see these boxes already! It’s really exciting to see people eagerly look through these materials that I had a hand in processing. If you are at all interested in Tufts’ athletic history or just want to see some cool, old Tufts memorabilia, I’d highly recommend checking out the Rocky Carzo Papers!
Hayley Mercer, Records and Accessioning Archivist
Although the core of my position as Records and Accessioning Archivist is processing newly received material there is a lot of variety in my day to day work. My responsibilities cover a range of tasks including managing transfers of collections to TARC, accessioning those collections (almost like it's there in my job title!), providing reference support, supervising student workers, and completing baseline processing for new accessions so that they are findable and useable by researchers. At the start of summer when I began my part of the backlog processing project, I knew that I was going to have to mentally adjust to the new daily agenda.
That move from processing as just one of many duties to all-processing-all-the-time allowed me to knock out several smaller accessions early in the project. These smaller accessions, generally a few folders at most with occasional bits of ephemera, got me into the swing of the new workflow before moving on to larger accessions. Some personal highlights from this early stage of the process include materials from WMFO (a Tufts-owned radio station operated by students and members of the community) and photographs and memorabilia belonging to Carlton N. Morrow and Edith Nelson (class of 1926). My favorite parts of TARC’s collections are the representations of student life at Tufts, so these snapshots of club activity and friends from almost 100 years ago goofing off together were a lovely beginning to the backlog processing project.
University Records Manager Kate McNally had developed a specific schedule of what accessions to process, on which date, at what level of description, with the maximum amount of time allocated to each accession. Once I got through the smaller accessions, it was time to move on to the larger ones. Most of these were for what we call university records—records created by departments or individuals as part of Tufts University functions. These can be things like annual reports, meeting minutes, correspondence, or photographs. As a theater lover I enjoyed processing records of the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies that documented the construction of the Balch Arena Theater (check Annalise’s section above if the name “Balch” rings a bell or to learn why he might have a theater named after him!) as well as the development of productions staged under the auspices of TDPS, syllabi, departmental meeting minutes, and course booklets. Conversely, as a sweets lover I found myself unexpectedly fascinated and genuinely charmed by the School of Dental Medicine’s records (see the 1944 photograph of the school’s tooth-themed bowling league’s annual dinner for an idea why). The Office of Communications and Marketing Records accessions were an amazing resource of production files for publications and past publicity efforts that I’m thrilled to have helped make accessible to researchers!
The largest accession I worked on was an addition to our collection of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice Records (CHEJ for short). Because CHEJ is a third-party organization not actually affiliated with the University, it is treated as a “Manuscript Collection” here at Tufts. Manuscript collections are archival collections that are not directly created as a result of the running of Tufts University, but that may have a connection to the University or one of TARC’s specialized collecting areas. The CHEJ Records cover the organization’s work across the country, from its origins as a clearinghouse for information on environmental issues and documents CHEJ's role as an educator for other activists and the public on environmental health concerns, leadership, fundraising, and environmental laws and legislation. The new accession (38.5 linear feet of material pre-processing) contained new project files, board meeting minutes, promotional material, and so much more to make an even more robust collection chronicling nearly fifty years of environmental activism. CHEJ was already one of our largest and most heavily used collections, and I was ecstatic to be able to add this additional material and description to it. You can learn about what they’re currently doing by checking out the CHEJ website!
I’ve only given brief summaries of a sampling of the accessions I processed, but I hope I’ve shown just how fascinating these collections are. One of my biggest reflections on the backlog project has been how invaluable the strict schedule and “process to the clock” approach that Kate described has been. Having that quantifiable way to keep myself on track helped me to focus on creating good description and arrangement without getting too engrossed in the minutiae of the accessions. I also appreciated the breadth of records I processed. We accept donations from university departments, student clubs and organizations, alumni, and outside donors; all four donation sources were represented in this project. The different types of records and topics covered meant that even in an all-processing environment, my days were almost as varied as they are when I’m handling a more diverse field of tasks. Finally, I loved the opportunity that the backlog processing project gave me to learn more about Tufts history and TARC’s collections. I’ve been at TARC for a little over a year and am aware of how much more I have to learn about this community that I’ve joined! I’ve certainly taken every opportunity I can in that time to learn as much as I can, but this project almost served as a crash course in all things Tufts and Tufts- adjacent.
Are you from a university department looking to transfer your records to TARC? Are you interested in donating material that documents the university’s activities and student life? Reach out to us at archives@tufts.edu and we can talk more about the kind of material we collect!