[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Processing Status vs. Finding Aid Status

[Olivia S Solis]

Hello all,

We have just recently gone live with accessions and soon will start
creating new resource records in ArchivesSpace. Yay for progress! We're
fine-tuning some of our resource records workflows and are realizing we may
not have given enough thought to the difference between "Finding Aid
Status" and the "Processing Status" field in ArchivesSpace. We've got both
in our workflows, but this may be redundant.

I can see some immediate distinctions between the two:
1) Processing status is a field shared among resources and accessions in
Collections Management; Finding Aid Status is just for resources.
Nonetheless, the Collections Management fields cannot be shared between a
resource record and accession record.
2) You can create a default report for unprocessed accessions, presumedly
dedicated by the processing status field (we've not thoroughly tested
reports).
3) A resource record may be undergoing major revisions so the finding aid
is under revision, but you may consider the collection already processed.
4) Maybe you've processed a collection but don't have a good publicly
accessible finding aid and there for consider it's finding aid to be
unprocessed? (This seems dubious to me). We've got a lot of "paper" finding
aids accessible in the reading room only. But the collection would still
seem processed to me. And this also seems like something you could track
with the Assessments module.
5) Conveniently, "Finding Aid Status" is immediately available as a search
results column for resources. It's be nice to sort results by that column.

Anyway, I was wondering if any of you have decided to use one or the other
field to describe the processing state of collections. Do you use those two
fields in distinct ways, and if so how? How do you define each for your
processors and / or accessioners.

FYI, we are using processing status for accessions going forward. We've
customized it a bit (for instance including a "Pending" status for
accessions not yet arrived so we can document associated events like deed
sent.)

Thank you!

-Olivia
-- 
Olivia Solis, MSIS
Metadata Coordinator
Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
The University of Texas at Austin
2300 Red River St. Stop D1100
Austin TX, 78712-1426
(512) 232-8013
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