More Than a Project: Case Studies on the Practice of Retrospective Accessioning

ABSTRACT This article supplements the professional discourse on accessioning and demonstrates the opportunities, benefits, and challenges of retrospective accessioning in different institutional contexts. Retrospective accessioning is a specific approach to archival collection management that seeks to establish baseline intellectual and physical control over archival material that lacks foundational controls typically required by most modern archives programs. Accumulations of such material are known as accessioning backlogs. In light of the resourcing challenges currently felt throughout the profession, it is prudent to consider retrospective accessioning as an effective tool for mitigating the varied operational effects of accessioning backlogs. This article untangles the origins and effects of accessioning backlogs and demonstrates the pragmatic benefits that retrospective accessioning can bring to a repository. Case studies from University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Santa Cruz; and Wake Forest University show that retrospective accessioning can be successfully employed to enhance collection management conditions at a range of repositories. They also indicate that retrospective accessioning methods have evolved over time and reveal this work as a specialized and functional praxis within the archival profession. These case studies indicate that retrospective accessioning offers a proven way to reveal, understand, and pay down archival debt incurred by deferring the essential functions of accessioning, reappraisal, and deaccessioning over time.