As you become more familiar with processing work, and depending on a variety of factors, your work plan may need to be more or less formal. If it is a large project that has high research value and donor importance we may want to process to a higher level and it is more important that a work plan is filled out before work begins. If, on the other hand, it is an annual accrual with an inventory, it is easy to add to the existing description and a work plan is not necessary, though many of the steps outlined in this document may be quickly thought through before work takes place.
Use the work plan form (LINK) as a place to record your notes. Use the first section for your survey notes. Use the third section to create your plan. This is the work you will do on the collection. After your plan is approved you may move forward with actually working on the collection and adding description to ArchivesSpace. As you complete the tasks in section three, move them to section two in order to record the work you have done. When you are done processing the collection you may add more notes to section three on future work that could still be done, or work that you were not able to finish. This will guide whomever does processing work on the collection in the future, and may answer questions about what work was done and why.
Examples:
When you don't have time / resources / staff to process but want to note some things that could be done in the future: