Grants & Awards: DHP: Grant Application & Reference Material:
Processing Rates
There are a number of tools that can be used to determine an appropriate processing rate. Full processing includes flat‑filing, simple cleaning, arrangement, description, foldering, and boxing.
1) The Federal Rate for personal papers and manuscripts is 2.5 cubic feet per week
2) The State Archive’s general guidelines are:
- Completely unorganized collection -2.5 cubic feet per week
- Complicated series such as correspondence or subject files - 5 cubic feet per week
- Fairly straightforward series that may need some work such as case or job files, business records - 10 cubic feet per week
- Well-organized series consisting primarily of volumes or voluminous series with uniform or repetitive information (such as invoices) - 15 cubic feet per week.
3) The following table based on Karen T. and Thomas E. Lynch’s “Rates of Processing Manuscripts and Archives,” (The Midwestern Archivist, 7:1, 1982).
Type and Date of Record |
Processing time per cubic feet |
Cubic feet per week |
Pre‑1800 personal papers |
9 days |
0.5 |
Pre‑1900 personal papers |
5 ½ days |
1 |
Post‑1900 personal papers |
3 ½ days |
1.43 |
Pre‑1800 state government |
4 ¼ days |
1.18 |
Pre‑1900 state government |
2 ¾ days |
1.8 |
Post‑1900 state government |
1.1 days |
4.5 |
Pre‑1800 business |
4 ¼ days |
1.18 |
Pre‑1900 business |
2 ¾ days |
1.8 |
Post‑1900 business |
1 ¼ days |
4.0 |
Pre‑1800 local government |
7 days |
0.71 |
Pre‑1900 local government |
4 ½ days |
1.11 |
Post‑1900 local government |
2 ¼ days |
2.2 |
Whichever method you choose, be sure to provide justification and rational based on the records themselves (their current arrangement and their content).
Complete DHP Grant Application Guidelines PDF format (Requires Adobe Reader)