iSchool Capstone

The Legislative Archive: A Taxonomy, Finding Aids, and Processing Plans for Records of the King County Council Members and Committees

Project tags:

archives & special collections

Project poster

As the county’s legislative branch, the King County Council represents the people, interests and issues of county constituents in Washington State. The resultant working papers of Council members, committee meeting minutes and agendas are archived at the King County Archives. Although arranged according to the principle of provenance and described at the series level, Committee meeting records and Council member files lack consistency across Committee and Council member names, dates, and covered topics. Finding Aids are also brief or unavailable, making this collection difficult to use. To address these information problems, our project designed templates for Finding Aids and Processing Plans along with a taxonomy for use by Archives staff to effectively integrate new accessions and structure existing collections for comprehensibility. These information organization tools will facilitate the work of Archives staff while making the Legislative Collection more accessible and user-friendly for researchers and the general public alike.

Project participants:

Linda DeBruin

MLIS

Yulia Kolesnikova

MLIS

Nichole Martin

MLIS