[DCRM-L] Cataloging and Discoverability for Brief Manuscripts?

[Rebecca Flore]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some collective wisdom. My library is rethinking how we how we make our describe and make discoverable our brief (1- or 2-sheet) manuscripts like letters, legal documents, printed forms completed in manuscript, etc. after many decades of inconsistent practice, and I'd love to hear how other libraries treat these. Does your institution have individual MARC records for each brief manuscript? Do you have a made-up collection with an EAD finding aid that lists all your brief manuscripts? Both? Some other solution? Is there anything you like or dislike about your current system, and do patrons generally seem to be able to find what they're looking for? Feel free to reply off- or on-list.

Over the years my library has alternated between treating brief manuscripts in two ways. (1) Cataloging them individually and giving them a holdings location in our Codex Manuscripts Collection-good for discovery since each item is getting its own name and subject access points, but a bit of a misleading since they're not codices. (2) Adding them to a made-up collection with a finding aid named the Historical Manuscripts Collection-a nice one-stop shop for patrons looking for letters in our collection, but they lack subject access points and our finding aids database only does keyword searching. Neither approach is perfect, so I'm hoping we can follow the lead of other libraries.
Best wishes,
Rebecca
______________________________
Rebecca Flore, PhD
Special Collections Metadata Librarian
The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center
The University of Chicago
Regenstein Library
1100 E. 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637
T 773.702.7602
rflore at uchicago.edu<mailto:rflore at uchicago.edu>
lib.uchicago.edu/scrc | additional info

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