MAC 2008 Plenary Session-The Future Belongs to Archives

Jennifer Schaffner of OCLC

MPLP - More Product Less Process.

Talked about scanning for access versus scanning for preservation. Quantity not quality to improve access. Funders are more likely to support proposals for large scale access.

To add lots of records easily:

• Look at converting preservation microfilm because it is cheap to digitize.
• Use a digital camera to give a taste of collections when processed.
• Digitize things frequently requested.

This session generated a lot of discussion afterwards for several reasons. First a photograph online with no metadata is useless. In most cases it will never even be found. And collections with limited descriptions are also hard to use and find relevant material. How useful is a collection with several boxes of correspondence with nothing but dates on each folder? We have collections like this and they get no use. But collections with more in-depth descriptions do get used.

Also many institutions depend on use fees and copy fees as a revenue stream. If everything is digitized and online a major revenue source dries up.