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Re: Small Collections



I think Bill Landis has an excellent approach. Another way to look at it is
that "catalog-worthiness" is itself an appraisal value. That is, if it's
important enough to catalog, it's important enough to keep. If it's not
important enough to catalog, that may be a factor (to be considered along
with others, or course) for moving the item out of your collection. Either
way, it is content, not size, that should govern your decision to catalog
something.

Lee
==--00--==

Leon C. Miller, Manuscripts Librarian
Special Collections, Jones Hall, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118
Ph: 504-865-5685, Fx: 504-865-5761
Leon.Miller@tulane.edu
http://www.tulane.edu/~lmiller/SpecCollHomepage.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU]On Behalf
Of Bill Landis
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2000 2:24 PM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Re: Small Collections

On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Joy Kingsolver wrote:

> These collections are often too small to have a guide--some contain
> one or 2 items only. They really are miscellaneous.  My first plan
> was to do a MARC record for each collection, but the time involved
> made me hesitate. (This repository has a staff of one--me.)  The real
> alternative is to do no MARC records at all and leave them in a local
> database, which is the way I'm leaning at the moment.
> Thanks for your comments.

Seems to me that this should really be a content appraisal issue and
not a size issue! I've seen some 1 or 2 item collections that are
dyn-O-mite and certainly warrant the time and effort of a MARC record.
Then the $10,000 question becomes ... if a 1-2 item collection isn't worth
your standard access-provision protocols for your collections, is it
really worth keeping? Better in a vertical file with topical access,
treating the vertical file as you would a collection? Good appraisal
guidelines for your collections might be one tool to use in helping with
this decision.

Bill

--
Bill Landis__________________________|_____________________blandis@uci.edu
Manuscripts Librarian                |                   The UCI Libraries
Department of Special Collections    |            University of California
949 824.3113                         |                      P.O. Box 19557
949 824.2472 FAX                     |              Irvine, CA  92623-9557

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