Methodology
Publication follows source custody, description discipline, and explicit editorial 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, ingest candidates, and planned material rather than collapsing them 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 or ad hoc notes.
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 repo also contains a verified dry-run ingest pass against a local Nixon metadata feed together with a separate non-live preview payload. Those candidate records remain outside the live public release path until they are reviewed and publication-safe.
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 item records or collection updates.
Generated ingest output should be treated as candidate public description until it has passed editorial review. Official public editions, external digital surrogates, and local archival description should each be labeled according to what the public page actually represents.
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 a sample record is replaced by a verified one.
Longer term, versioning and ingest manifests should be added so that public updates can be audited against the local archival pipeline.