I recently started working at a small museum and have discovered that much of the material has been left unprocessed. I know most museums (in my country, at least) struggle with a backlog of uncatalogued objects, so this is not really a unique experience. My museum is proud of its photography collection. Half of it has been scanned and registered in our cataloguing system, which is connected to a public-facing portal where people can search through our photos. The physical photos are stored in acid-free envelopes in two metal cabinets, organised by their registration number.
A few weeks ago, I discovered another drawer filled with unprocessed photographs. I was, quite frankly, shocked. The manner in which they had been strewn about in this drawer was unprofessional and disrespectful to whoever donated the photos to the museum. Some were in mail envelopes (perhaps they were sent), some were loose, some were developed, and others were negatives. Some are fine, others are scratched up.
So, what have I done? We might not know their provenance, and for most of them, we have no information about location/date/individuals, or how they were acquired. And yet, they should be catalogued and archived. I can easily create registration posts in the cataloguing software, and I've started scanning them. That said, I have no idea how to organise these in the archive. Should I include them in the main drawers or treat them as a separate "collection"? All registrations must belong to an acquisition (which also has a unique number). Since we don't know the provenance, what would the protocol be here? Should they all be handled as a single acquisition (with the metadata explaining what has happened)?
I really hope this is the right subreddit for this. I'm not an archivist, just a humble historian.