Deaccessioning Practices
Every effort should be made to review donations and remove unneeded or inappropriate items before accessioning. Should an accessioned collection prove to contain materials later deemed to fall outside of retention guidelines, staff may choose to deaccession items. The department Head should be consulted in such an event.
- Does not fit within the scope of collecting for Spec
- Does not have an identifiable enduring value or presents a poor case for use
- Spec does not have the capacity to adequately preserve the medium
- The volume of the material puts strain on limited storage space
- Poor condition threatens long-term use and/or the condition of other materials
- Present concerns about personal privacy
- Duplicate copies of existing Spec holdings
- Non-unique and mass-produced
When an item(s) is removed from an accessioned collection, a note should be made in the ArchivesSpace (AS) record and any existing or future Archives West finding aid to convey what type and volume of materials were removed. An example might be “1.5 cubic feet of materials removed for containing personal financial records.”
Deaccessioned items may be disposed of in a variety of ways. If indicated on the Deed of Gift form, the donor has the right to first refusal. If a donor’s contact information is no longer current, or the donor is no longer alive, efforts should be made to find another relevant contact. If the donor is not interested in taking back materials, follow these general guidelines.
- Publications of interest may be offered to library liaisons
- Unique materials in good condition and not containing personally sensitive material may be offered to another preservation organization, like a historical society, museum, or another archive
- Mass produced materials without a strong connection to any specific repository should be recycled
- Items in poor condition should be disposed of appropriately