Mapping Accessions to Repositories Data: A Case Study in Paradata

Accession is the term used within archive services to refer to both the process of taking ‘intellectual and physical custody of materials’ and to those materials themselves—‘the materials physically and officially transferred to a repository as a unit at a single time’ (Society of American Archivists. Dictionary of Archives Terminology, s.v. ‘accession’. Retrieved December 15, 2022, from https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/accession.html , n.d.). This chapter describes an exercise to repurpose data collected about accessions to repositories over the period 2007–2020. The steps involved in cleaning and preparing the data are described and a contextual narrative to them is provided. Reflections are offered on the idea of paradata as it was explored and put into practice during the project.