Adventures in Archiving...

Over the past few days I have had adventures in archive documentation... It's worth knowing that most of our archive documentation/database is kept in a series of excel sheets, rather than any sort of database or archiving software.

Excel can be a very effective tool, but in the same way that using a loaded gun as a paperweight is an effective tool - fine until someone does something uneducated, hurried, or plain daft with it. 

Archive Adventures 1.

N/A is never something one should be allowed put into the “Date” entry for an archived item. 
The date is always applicable, even if only an estimate.

Archive Adventures 2.

Archive Adventures continue… In this Excel document, some boxes are formatted as text, some are formatted as numbers.
So when you try to sort data into date order, it effectively creates two lists, one above the other, one with the text dates in alphabetical order, one with the numerical dates in numerical order.
If you will insist that Excel is fit for purpose, at least be consistent with it?

Archive Adventures 3.

Six identical items, split into two separate listings.
One listing has a manufacturing date. 
The other listing says manufacturing date is TBC. 
The items were all manufactured at the same time.
Methinks someone “updated” the archive by adding three new items, without first checking if there was an existing listing to just expand.

Archive Adventures 4.

The date is always applicable, even if only an estimate.
"Old" is slightly better than N/A, but very only slightly just better.

Archives are kept for a reason, accompanying documentation is created for a reason. The database documents what you have, how many you have, if there are restrictions on use, where to find things... It can also help you understand what you don't have, and any gaps in the collection it would be appropriate to fill.

A sloppy archive and database documentation are almost more of an impediment than the "room full of stuff, and one person knows how it works" school of archiving. I'm nigh on wishing we were back in those days, where a well timed ask for a favour got results faster than an argument with Excel.