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Re: In-house publications



I absolutely agree regarding the importance (and occasional difficulty) of
collecting instituional publications. And archivists certainly win friends
and admirers by producing an item when no one else can!

If your institution has a centralized printing/duplicating unit (we do), a
good way to build a comprehensive collection of in-house publications is to
arrange to have that unit send you samples of everything they print. We've
been doing that for years, and it has worked well.

We try to collect 2 and sometimes 3 copies of most publications. That way,
if an office absolutely has to borrow a copy, we can lend it to them (and
earn bonus points).

Thomas J. Wood
Archivist
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
P.O. Box 19243
Springfield IL 62794-9243
217-206-6520 | wood@uis.edu | http://www.uis.edu/library/lib-arch


-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Peterson [mailto:gerald.peterson@UNI.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 9:56 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: In-house publications


This is not a silly question.  It is an annoying, recurrent problem.
Educating your public about the value of your services is one answer.
Locating a copy of a publication for an office that has lost its copy
works wonders.  Another answer is to get your institution to establish a
policy, possibly but not necessarily part of a records management
program, that calls for the deposit of one or two copies of all in-house
publications in your archives.

But there will always be departments that forget or choose not to
believe that they are included in any such policy.  This can be
especially true for offices that are at least quasi-commercial or that
face outward from the institution such as service bureaus, athletics
enterprises, or publications offices.  For these sorts of things you
must simply keep your eyes open and try to get their publications as
best you can.  Buying them is most annoying, but sometimes you will need
to do so.

Gerry Peterson
University Archivist
University of Northern Iowa

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