Thanks, Kathy, and to everyone else for their helpful replies. Most have been posted to the list, with only a couple to me off-list. I plan to compile those and share them anonymously in the near future.

 

To answer Kathy’s question, we use legal-size folders. Oftentimes in the re-housing, the folders have to be expanded to their one-inch-thick capacity, so one box fills up very quickly. It’s varied from one extreme to the other, though.

 

Laurie

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Kathy Mitchell [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 11:52 AM
To: Langland, Laurie; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: cost to process a collection - supplies issue[Scanned]

 

Hi Laurie,

I was curious about your estimate of 10 or 12 folders to 30 or 40 folders per box.  We recently finished processing a large political papers collection, and it seemed to me there were more folders per box, so I did a quick estimate.  We also use the legal by letter record center boxes, and we use letter size folders (for just about everything except some newspaper clippings).  Our average is 40 folders per box, with a low of 20 and a high of 101.  I suppose if you use legal folders you might have only 10 folders in a box, but that struck me as really low.  I know some of our collections have an average more around 50 folders per box.  I think if I had both legal and letter size folders I would estimate them separately.

 

Just some thoughts.  Interesting discussion!

 

Kathy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathy Mitchell
Archives Specialist
Special Collections & Archives
Penrose Library
University of Denver
2150 E. Evans Ave.
Denver, CO 80208
ph. 303.871.3428
fax 303.871.2290
[log in to unmask]
http://library.du.edu/about/collections/specialcollections/