Internship at Skagit Valley College

My site supervisor and I had a good long discussion this week about what the classification and call number schema should look like. We discussed the different ideas that I had brainstormed last week and we also looked at some examples from Tacoma Community College Archives. The identification # that they use begins with either “TCCA”, “RG”, or “M” and then includes numbers. After our discussion we decided that it would be best to change the taxonomy system/hierarchy to better suit our archive and to reflect the organization of the college as a whole. There are 4 main parts of the college; the Board of Trustees, Administration Services, Academic Services, and Student Services.

The new taxonomy system looks like:

• Board of Trustees
• Academic Services
  • Departments
  • Events
  • Faculty
  • Publications
• Administration Services
  • Accreditation
  • Events
  • Facilities
    • Blueprints
    • Campus Art
    • Campus Buildings
  • Foundation
    • Scholarships
  • Fundraising
  • Institutional Effectiveness
    • Accountability Reports
    • Diversity Committee
    • Evaluation Committee Reports
    • Operating Budgets
    • Self Study Reports
    • Strategic Plans
  • Marketing
  • PIO
  • President’s Office
  • Publications
• Student Services
  • Advising
  • Athletics
  • Clubs
  • Events
  • Publications
    • Newspaper
    • Yearbook
  • Reigstration

Because we decided to change the taxonomy system and we want to organize everything alphabetically within their categories we also decided to re-organize the physical collection to fit within the taxonomy system. This week that is what we worked on, we were able to re-organize at least preliminarily the Academic and Administration categories, the Student category is still waiting to be put into their drawers.

After refining the taxonomy system we were also better able to decide on the schema for the call number system. The first three letters will be taken from the macro categories; Academic Services, Administration Services, Board of Trustees, Student Services. The first three letters will be the beginning of the call number and then the sub categories will be the second part of the call number. If there are pertinent dates then those will be the third part of the call number. This schema will look like:

ACA – [sub-category]. [Date if applicable]

ADM – [sub-category]. [Date if applicable]

BOT – [sub-category]. [Date if applicable]

STU – [sub-category]. [Date if applicable]

The good thing about using this system is that we are able to keep the items that have already been cataloged and assigned a call number by a previous MLIS student intern are able to stay how they are. These items have already been assigned call numbers beginning with BOT and they are followed by the sub-categories.

After our discussion we also decided that it would make more sense with the time that we have allotted to focus on the cataloging and digitization of one of these categories. Since performing these tasks on all of the categories would take too much time that we do not have with half of the quarter already being completed.

We decided that the inventory process is complete and we will now focus on cataloging, classifying and digitizing the Student Services category and the other two categories will be undertaken by future MLIS student interns and the colleges student workers. We are narrowing the scope of the content that we will be able to complete but we will be able to complete most if not all of the outcomes that we outlined in our project charter.