MPLP as Intentional, not Necessarily Minimal, Processing: The Rudolf W. Becking Collection at Humboldt State University

Abstract

This case study documents how More Product, Less Process (MPLP) was used to process a large twentieth-century manuscript collection at Humboldt State University Library Special Collections. HSU is a small, publicly funded repository quite different from those previously discussed in the MPLP literature. In contrast to many published examples of MPLP in practice, MPLP was not used at HSU to address an overwhelming backlog through widespread minimal processing or by adopting a baseline processing metric. Instead, MPLP served more broadly as a framework for deciding how to allocate available resources to best fulfill the repository's mission and benefit the end users of the collections. This case study supports a nuanced understanding of MPLP as a decision-making framework (not a set of processing techniques) and the potential value of MPLP to a wide range of archival scenarios.