Services
Who we work with
Practice Index works with any artist, artist estate or arts organization that has decided that preserving a record of their work is important. Candidates for Practice Index do not need to have a formally existing archive, but instead an ambition to make narratives around their work accessible to a broader audience.
Practice Index offers guidance for preserving a record of your work and making it meaningfully accessible. We do not expect that every person will need every service we offer, however our familiarity with the complete spectrum of creative practice archiving does aid in making sustainable recommendations.
Institutional assessment
We ask all Practice Index clients to undergo some form of institutional assessment as it relates to your archives. This involves at least one full day—onsite, when possible—where we will map how materials are generated and stored by you; how materials are accessed internally and externally; what digital and physical infrastructure exists; and your budget and capacity for material and labor provisions.
Surveys
Depending on where you are on your preservation journey, this might be as simple as confirming the total size and condition of physical and digital documents. In most circumstances, however, this will involve identifying the formats, scope, content, and even ownership of materials. The survey will also give us a sense of the institutional goals for the collection and finding a pathway forward to serving your specific needs.
Intellectual arrangement
Once we have a picture of what materials make up your archive, Practice Index can work with you to create an organization scheme that ensures your records are searchable along with top-level description that keeps our work meaningful to both yourself and others in the future. We seek to make arrangement schema that work for both physical and digital materials to aid in short-term processing and long-term stewardship.
Processing
In most cases, “folder-level” processing is actually not necessary to get your archive in a usable state. Precise intellectual arrangement and a well-documented institutional assessment is generally a strong enough foundation to allow you to begin meaningful work on your own records, and allows Practice Index to design and implement processing workflows for the future. If necessary, Practice Index can process a limited number of documents, as well as generate a comprehensive training tool for future archive stakeholders.
Oral histories & programming
We presume anyone seeking our services already recognizes the value of their records, and feels there is a need to share these records more broadly. Practice Index can develop programming surrounding your archive, sometimes even in partnership with aligned artists and organizations. If you feel there is a story that exists beyond your document holdings, Practice Index has experience designing Oral History projects that range from formal practice to experimental interventions.
Grants
These things unfortunately cost money. Based on our assessments while working with you, we may recommend material support for your archive beyond the scope of our services: rehousing, archival materials, capital improvements, and most likely, temporary staffing. To address these needs, Practice Index can help identify specific grants and provide support in applying for them.
Repository identification
Not every archive can—or should—be donated to a repository, but we do acknowledge that in some instances that is an ideal option. Practice Index can work with you to see if this is a viable goal, identify institutions that are a sensible fit for your papers, and help navigate the donation.
Digitization & time-based media preservation
Our team has a soft spot for digital and time-based media puzzles. We can provide ad-hoc digitization services, and are more than equipped to handle complex multi-component objects.