De La Salle University - Manila

Processing Policies

Processing is the preservation, arrangement, and description of collections and records series to be maintained in the Archives.

• An over-all processing program should be based on the following criteria:
  • Institutional goals and priorities
  • Users' needs
  • Physical condition of the records
  • Available manpower, resources and facilities
  • Cost
• The division of tasks between professional and non- professional staff in such a processing program is as important as determining how processing should proceed. As a general rule, the Archivist must be responsible for:
  • Decision affecting overall arrangement, description, preservation, and records disposition
  • Monitoring and supervising the physical rearrangement and listing
  • Preparing descriptions of the origin, scope, content, and other components of the records
  • Planning indexing strategies
• The non-professional staff should be responsible for:
  • Routine filing of individual items, re-foldering, boxing and listing
  • Basic conservation measures such as photocopying, removal of fasteners, paper clips, staple wires, and mending torn pages, etc.
  • Preparation of box, folder listing, container lists, and the like
  • Indexing
• Whenever possible, the records in each archival accession should be arranged and filed in the order in which they were originally created, maintained, and used. If the original order is no longer discernible or impossible/impractical to restore, the records may be re-arranged in the order deemed most suitable, logical, or useful by the Archivist.
• Care must be taken to ensure the strict adherence to the recognized principle of respect des fonds. Each record group represents a distinct unit.