Processing Workflow Analysis for Special Collections: The Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine as Case Study

Abstract

In our efforts to make the whole more than the sum of our parts, it is easy to forget that the better the parts, the better the whole. Our special collections and archives professions have placed a premium on the utility of our descriptive products and services to our end users, and rightly so.¹ Yet there remains, despite numerous calls in our professional literature,² a scarcity of data regarding the process inputs that lead up to the delivery of our product and services outputs, especially (and perhaps most notoriously) data pertaining to archival processing. This paper focuses on the Center . . .