Karen Mukai, with the help of C. Hugh Pettersen, did an excellent job of organizing the records before she turned them over to the University Archives. Consequently, processing consisted primarily of housing material in archival standard containers. The arrangement of the collection follows Karen Mukai's arrangement in nearly all respects. A minor variation consists of slight alterations of some of the folder labels to establish greater year-by-year consistency. However, in almost all cases, the processed folder contents are the same as they were when they arrived in the University Archives. The volume of material for each year of the festival increased over time to reflect the growth of the festival in extent and complexity.

Records of early festival years fill only a few folders; records of later years fill an entire records carton. The growth in the volume of records is most noticeable in the area relating to festival finances, especially after the festival emerged from the sponsorship of the College Hill Merchant and Professional Association in 1991. Special note on photographs: The records for most years of the festival include good collections of photographs. Most photographs are color prints, but there are also some black and white prints and a few slide transparencies. Some photographs are clearly labeled; most are not. Some photographic prints are still associated with their negatives. If that association was apparent to the processor of the collection, he made every effort to retain that association. For example, if prints and negatives were in the same commercial photographic processing envelope, then both the prints and negatives were placed in the same folder. This led to a certain amount of imprecision, because it was apparent that there was not a complete match between associated prints and negatives even in the same commercial envelope. In some cases, for example, there seemed to be a complete series of negative strips for a roll of film, perhaps twenty-four or thirty-six negatives, but only a dozen prints. Still, it seemed best to retain any association that apparently existed between negatives and prints. Researchers should also note that there is a large number of undated photographs located in Box 14 of this collection.