Collections Management Policy

The Collections Management Policy governs all aspects related to the stewardship of the People's Media Record's Archive, from management, development, and preservation to its use and activation. Stewardship may include the acquisition and ownership of materials by the People's Media Record, but not necessarily so. We define the Archive as the collection of all materials managed by People's Media Record (PMR or the Record), including internal and administrative records.

This Policy provides a system of guidelines for stewarding the Archive in a responsible manner, based on the mission, vision, and principles of People's Media Record. These guidelines:

• Establish the mission of the Archive,
• Explain how this mission is pursued through collection activity,
• Articulate the People's Media Record's standards regarding all materials in its care,
• Serves as a guide to staff and volunteers in carrying out any collection-related tasks and responsibilities, and
• Inform the public about what type of material and content the Archive collects and how it stewards the Archive.

The Policy was developed and drafted by Lila Chaar-Pérez (Director of Archiving and Preservation) with the support of Winter Schneider (Director of Strategic Planning and Resource Mobilization) and Rasheed Z. Ajamu (PACME Fellowship Coordinator), and the organization's Community Advisory Board (CAB). It was written with the help of the sources found at the end of the document.

This is a working document to be revised every three years by the Director of Archiving and Preservation with the support of the organization's staff and the CAB.

The Policy was first drafted in November 2025.

The Director of Archiving and Preservation is responsible for the planning and implementation of all stewardship practices related to the Archive. These practices may be delegated to other staff and volunteers, but the Director bears the ultimate responsibility for them.

Aside from the organization's principles, the work of the People's Media Record's Archive follows the following three core tenets:

In addition, the People's Media Record's Archive recognizes the Code of Ethics of the Society of American Archivists and the Statement of Principles of the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia and supports their content to the extent that they do not contradict its core tenets.

The People's Media Record's Archive was created to steward the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) Collection and collections associated with organizations, campaigns, and projects adjacent or connected to MMP, specifically the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Poor People's Campaign, New Jersey Platform, and Philly We Rise. The materials in the People's Media Record's Archive are primarily audiovisual media in digital form, including raw and edited video, photographic images, and social media. These materials constitute more than 80 terabytes of data.

In addition, the Archive was created with the long-term goal of stewarding other materials related to the grassroots history of activist and movement work in Philadelphia, as exemplified by the Media Mobilizing Project Collection. Activist and movement work content is defined by the Archive to include any form of mobilization that denounces social injustice and aims to build collective power and liberation for minoritized groups, the working class, and the poor. Because of MMP and PMR's location in Philadelphia, the Archive prioritizes collections directly or indirectly associated with Philadelphians. However, the Archive is open to stewarding collections that are unrelated to the city but have significant overlap with movement work content. The Archive privileges the stewardship of digital-born items, videotapes, and audio cassettes, although a limited number of physical objects would be considered if they are highly relevant to a collection.

Items are primarily stewarded to ensure that they are preserved and interpreted in agreement with the mission, values, and principles of People's Media Record, recognizing the field's best practices as well as the needs of the communities who own the materials or are documented in them.

Acquisition is the process of gaining ownership and custody over collection materials. Materials can be acquired through donations (by gift) or through purchases.

Through acquisition, the Archive becomes the legal owner and custodian of the gifted or purchased materials. This process requires the documented passing of the title of ownership by the seller, donor, or an authorized agent to People's Media Record. The passing of the title should include the legal transferal of copyright, in addition to instructions and desires for how the Archive is to steward the materials going forward. At its discretion, the Archive may request verification of an item's origins and ownership in documented form. The Archive should confirm the legal status of materials to the best of its ability prior to acquisition.

Once the deed of gift is signed and received, the items will be incorporated into the repository database with a unique identifier and reviewed for storage and cataloging as needed. In the archival profession, this process is called accessioning.

The process of acquisition of all objects will be fully documented, and all documents related to this process, such as the deed of gift, will be preserved following the same guidelines that are used for preserving the Archive.

The Archive may acquire materials from individuals, groups, or organizations that do not want to participate in the stewardship process of their materials nor to hold ownership over them. The Archive only acquires collections that fall within its scope and purpose, and it only does so with the intention of retaining them for the long term. The Archive should have the necessary resources to immediately digitize, transfer, or conserve any materials that are in need of it. The Archive will not acquire any materials for which it cannot provide proper preservation and stewardship.

No duplicates of materials that are in the collection will be accepted unless they are in better condition.

Although the Director of Archiving and Preservation is responsible for leading the acquiring of materials, all permanent staff are to take an active part in deciding which materials are to be acquired, and this decision has to be finally approved by PMR's Community Advisory Board.

In the case that individuals, groups, or organizations retain ownership over their materials but want the Archive to participate in the stewarding of the materials, the Archive will follow what professional archivists call the postcustodial model. In this model, instead of accepting custody of materials, an archive borrows and stewards them based on the archiving and preservation needs of the owner, as stipulated in a formal written agreement. In order to help articulate the goals of the stewardship process, this document is to be created by the Archive through a series of conversations with the owner.

The Archive will not steward any materials for which it cannot provide proper archiving and preservation.

Although the Director of Archiving and Preservation is responsible for leading the process that leads to the creation of a postcustodial stewardship agreement, all permanent staff are to support the creation of the agreement and the general process for deciding if materials are to be stewarded and in what ways. This decision has to be approved by PMR's Community Advisory Board.

Removal is the process of permanently disposing or transferring collection items, including their metadata and other associated data, from the Archive.

Collection items are removed when:

• There is an urgent need to create appropriate space and care for remaining items or to new collection items that are of better quality and significance.
• The items no longer fit the Archive's scope and purpose.
• It is discovered that collection items have a different owner and were therefore acquired illegally.
• Collection owners decide to have it transferred to another repository (in the case that the Archive is solely stewarding a collection that it does not own).
• They are redundant, or there are duplicates that have no clear value to the collection.
• They are in a format that the Archive cannot support anymore, and they cannot be converted to another format.
• They have suffered extensive damage that the Archive cannot fix.

All items proposed for removal from the Archive must be subject to a thorough review. The decision to remove materials must be made only after deliberate consideration of the needs of the Archive's users, communities associated with the materials, the general public, and the donor's intent. Removal must be approved by the rest of the team and CAB members.

Removal cannot violate any stipulations included by the donor in the deed of gift or by the collection owner in the stewarding contract, unless adherence to these stipulations is impossible. The impossibility of adherence should then be clearly demonstrated to the donor or owner.

When possible, objects that are recommended for removal will be transferred to an archive or repository that the donor or owner deems appropriate. No transfers will be made to non-profit institutions. Disposal or destruction of items will happen only when the owner requires it.

The procedure of removal shall be documented fully in the Archive's records.

The Director of Archiving and Preservation is responsible for considering and proposing objects for removal every three years.

The Archive will ensure that all collection items are taken care of in a sustainable manner for the long term, safeguarding them from loss, destruction, and degradation to the best of our capacity and according to the wishes of the donor and owner. The Director of Archiving and Preservation is responsible for all care and preservation activities, in coordination with other staff and volunteers, as applicable. Besides what is mentioned in other sections of this policy, the Archive's main responsibilities in collection care are:

• Maintaining a comprehensive preservation program that takes into consideration the best practices of the field, but also follows what is "good enough" for preserving collection items, with the Archive's capacity in mind.
• Take measures to prevent the theft, vandalism, destruction or damage by pests, fire, water, or other elements.
• Maintaining appropriate storage conditions for all objects through storage in our servers and backups in the cloud, and in LTO tapes. Internal records are stored in the cloud and will be backed up weekly in the cloud and yearly in LTO tapes.
• Monitoring of all collection objects in servers to ensure their integrity and authenticity, and replace them with backups when loss or deterioration has been detected.
• Plan for all necessary maintenance and management of the devices, software, and supplies required to operate the Archive in a secure, integral, and sustainable manner. This plan should consider not only budgeting for replacements, subscriptions, expansions, and labor as needed, but also staff capacity.
• Establish appropriate safety measures, including pest detection and removal, environmental control, and emergency preparedness and response procedures.
• Perform routine floor inspections to ensure a secure building envelope and alleviate structural or environmental concerns.
• Perform a regular risk assessment of all areas where the Archive is located.
• Ensure the protection of all collections and spaces related to the Archive from vandalism, criminal activity, and accidents.
• Ensure that objects are handled appropriately.

The Archive recognizes that archives play an important role in how certain historical narratives are created, shaped, and shared while other stories, particularly those pertaining to historically oppressed communities, are silenced, erased, or captured to build institutional capital. With this in mind, the Archive makes its collections accessible to the public for education, research, exhibition, and reproduction according to the wishes of the owner, donor, and the communities depicted and documented in collection items. The Archive balances the imperative to provide access with two central goals: safeguarding the Archive's collections and protecting the privacy and confidentiality of the individuals, groups, and organizations that form part of the stories that are told through the Archive. All decisions related to access and privacy follow the mission, vision, and principles of People's Media Record.

For materials that are not publicly accessible through our website, users must complete an access form in order to view the items. In this form, users are expected to share their intentions in accessing materials as well as who they are, what organization, group, or institution they belong to or work for, if any, and other relevant aspects about who they are and what they do. Access will be provided on a case by case basis; it will not be granted to users who intend to reproduce materials for commercial use or whose ideas and practices do not align with the organization's mission, vision, and principles.

When possible, each collection within the Archive has its own specific policy regarding access, use, and privacy, created jointly between the Director of Archiving and Preservation (with support from staff and the Community Advisory Board) and collection owners, created exclusively by the owners, or created exclusively by the Director (with support from staff and the Community Advisory Board). An example of a specific policy is the Media Mobilizing Project Collection's community policy. In the case that there is no specific policy, the Archive defaults to our general access policy as outlined here.

The Archive ensures that all descriptive information (metadata) for collection items is publicly accessible and that all personal or sensitive data is not publicly released. For more on our metadata practice, please see our Metadata Overview.

Any reproduction and publication of copyrighted material will be limited to non-commercial or education purposes and governed by U.S. copyright law as stated in Title 17. If interested in reproduction and publication, users are required to share their intention.

In granting permission to publish material obtained from the Archive, the Archive does not assume responsibility for infringement of copyright or of publication rights of material that may be held by others. The publisher assumes all responsibility for claims under the Copyright Law of the United States or for libel claims resulting from publication. The publisher agrees to credit the organization: “Courtesy of the People's Media Record.”

It is the Director of Archiving and Preservation's responsibility to determine whether collection materials are in the public domain or are protected by copyright. A statement of permission must be obtained from the holder of the rights, and proper credits given, for all reproductions that are not the intellectual property of People's Media Record. The responsibility for obtaining additional permission required for the publication of collections remains with the publisher of the material.

All procedures related to users accessing collections will be fully documented and preserved in the Archive's internal records.