[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Massive, flat collections

[Afro Charities Archives Staff]

Hello,

We're embarking on a project to create a finding aid for a newspaper
morgue, which is a vertical file with likely over 150K folders arranged
alphabetically by subject.

We know we need to break it up, and the time has come to decide exactly
how. The most rational seems to be to use the alphabet. The number of boxes
per letter ranges from 1 box (for Q) to 53 boxes (for M). Boxes seem to max
out at around 200 folders.

What I'm pondering is whether to create a single resource with separate
series for each letter, or whether to create individual resources for each
letter. We've gotten advice to avoid having more than 5,000 AO's at the
same level to avoid instability in the system, so we may need to break some
of the bigger letters down further. We know to avoid using containers and
locations as artificial collections.

Before we make these basic structural decisions and I thought I'd throw the
question out there. Does anyone have experience working with large,
non-hierarchical collections like this? Any advice or examples or lessons
learned would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Megan McShea



www.afrocharities.org
IG: @afrocharities <http://instagram.com/afrocharities>
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