Merging Collections

Ideally the intellectual (description) merge and the physical box updates should happen as close together as possible in order for the description to be accurate. It may be easier to work on the intellectual merging first and then update the box labels because you may not know what your new box labels will have to be until after the intellectual merge has happened. This will make shifting materials into boxes that already exist in the “merged into” collection easier to update intellectually as well because that top container will already be associated with that collection. There may be times though when physically updating containers comes first. Regardless, the final description has to match the container information.

Description Merge

Resource Record

• Depending on the nature of the incoming container list data you may want to create a new series where all the incoming data will go. Other options are to just add material to the end of the container list.

• Add an access note to all collections that will be affected as part of the merge project, “Temporarily restricted due to re-processing. For more information contact archivesspace-help@mit.edu”

• Notes

• Copy and paste collection level information (dates, extents, scope and content notes, bio/hist notes etc) from the collection you will be merging and deleting into the new series. Only copy the unique notes, so if the access and use statements are the same as the collection level notes in the collection you are merging in to, you do not need to copy those over. 

• If you are not creating a new series for the materials being merged, update the collection level notes to incorporate any collection level notes from the description that will be deleted.

• Update collection level description

• Dates

• Extent

• Download PDF of resource record that will be deleted and add to its control folder

• Merge

• You do not need to manually copy and paste the container List, agents, subjects, or related accessions, these will be merged by ASpace when you use the “merge” button

• Use the “Merge” button while in the collection you want to merge other collections into. The “merged from” collection container list will be inserted at the end of the “merged to” collection container list.

• Using the “reorder” button, move the merged container list to the corresponding series if there is one

• Event - created automatically

• Update “outcome” to describe what collections were merged, example: “AC-0613 MIT, Theater Arts Program records merged into AC-0233 MIT, Music and Theater Arts Section records”

Finalize description and box labels

Each physical box may have to be renumbered so that there aren’t duplicate numbers in the updated resource record. We want to avoid box numbers restarting from 1 for each series which may be the case after the merge. You may want to wait until you complete intellectual merging before updating box numbers and any shifting.

• Change the box labels to match the new collection and new box numbers. 

• Finalize box

• Limit the amount of shifting of content, but there may be some instances where it is appropriate - if the box is mostly empty; if you are moving one folder into a box that has room for it; if the record box is in poor condition and needs to be reboxed, use manuscript boxes.

• Labels and barcodes:

  • Print new labels updating the collection name, number, box number, and DDC repository

  • The barcodes can stay the same - ask the Processing Associate to print duplicate barcodes - you might just need one for the label, but if putting in a new box may need up to 3. 

  • If reboxing one box into two boxes, (Paige box into two manuscript boxes) both manuscript boxes will need new barcodes, and the original barcode can be added to the barcode reuse list.

  • Each manuscript box gets a new number (avoid “5a” and “5b”)

• Update the box numbers in ArchivesSpace

• Add a processing info note. If merge was part of larger project - ie the 2020 Summer Combining Collections Project indicate that in the processing note

• Add a revision statement

• Update accession note 

• Update the Disposition Note in the accession records indicating that materials were originally in one collection and that collection was merged with another.

• Check that the accession now links to the merged resource record - when you merge new links should override the old. This is the text you will see when you merge one collection into another: “All selected records will be deleted and any linked records will be re-linked to this resource.”

• Update Access note to: Collection is open

• Publish collection to ASpace PUI

• Move working documents - project plans, reports, summaries to the control file

• Combine all control folders into new (merged into) control folder

• Add link to the control folder in the External Documents

• Email the Collections, Reference, and Processing Teams that the merge is complete