Methodology
Publication follows source custody, description discipline, and explicit archival notes.
Ball Archives is structured so the public site does not replace the underlying archive. The publication process is meant to preserve provenance, make restrictions visible, and separate public description from archival working material rather than collapsing everything into one public claim.
Methodology for source handling, metadata publication, and archival description at Ball Archives.
Source of truth
The canonical archive remains local and private. Working files, arrangement decisions, scans, correspondence, and provenance records should be managed in the underlying archival workspace rather than directly on the public website.
The website is downstream. It receives curated metadata and public-facing copy after editorial review, not raw ingest output, working notes, or provisional archival descriptions.
Current operating state
The current public Nixon item layer is a reviewed published-volume tranche: the Public Papers of Richard Nixon volumes for 1969 through 1974. Ball Archives describes these items as a bounded public series and links to the official GovInfo editions rather than implying a broader Nixon release than is presently available.
The Judicial Papers now publish as a live collection guide plus a reviewed metadata-only tranche of outward-facing writings, testimony, policy documents, and training/reference material. That tranche is deliberately metadata-only: the site describes the records and preserves durable citations without exposing local file downloads or implying that the wider judicial corpus is open.
Non-live previews and candidate artifacts may exist in repo-local workflows, but they remain outside the public archive until they are reviewed and deliberately promoted.
Publication workflow
The recommended publication sequence is: identify public-safe material, normalize metadata, review provenance and rights statements, assign stable URLs, and only then publish record pages or collection updates.
Official public editions, external digital surrogates, and local archival description should each be labeled according to what the public page actually represents. The site should not flatten those differences into one generic access claim.
Revision discipline
URLs should remain stable. If records are revised, citations should continue to resolve to the same canonical address whenever possible. Public notes should indicate meaningful status changes when descriptive framing, access posture, or rights language changes materially.
Release records, manifests, and verification artifacts should make public updates auditable against the local archival pipeline without turning the public site into an operator dashboard.