Managing Change and Chance: Collecting Policies in Social History Archives

The traditional methods for developing collecting policies do not work well in social history archives. Because social history archives typically have less than complete knowledge of the records available in their collecting universe, coherent guidance, flexibility, and a means for ongoing reassessment become equally important requirements of an effective collecting policy. This paper is a description of the process employed by the Research Library of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies to develop a viable collecting policy and to implement an active collecting program. The process entails a cyclical approach to policy development and a careful consideration of collecting strategies.