n.a collection of personal papers, family papers, or organizational recordsSmith 1938a, 19The manuscript collections here are not so extensive as at the Bodleian and consequently the question of manuscript repair has not been seriously encountered.Nuermberger 1941, 258In 1936 the Association of Research Libraries sponsored a movement to establish a union list of manuscript collections in depositories throughout the country.Lewinson 1954, 19Records relating to the modern labor movement constitute an important source of primary material for a variety of historical and economic studies. They are to be found among Government archives, among business records, in the manuscript collections of individuals (including those of employers, labor leaders, political figures, and specialized scholars), and among the files of labor organizations.Schellenberg 1959, 57In the last century, when there was a paucity of research materials and when such materials were housed mainly by historical societies that served as libraries or by libraries themselves, the methods employed were primarily those of librarians. In the Massachusetts Historical Society, for example, the manuscript collections were usually bound in books, the contents of the books were indexed, and the books themselves were cataloged. If the manuscripts did not lend themselves to binding, the individual documents were handled separately and were separately cataloged. The standard procedure was to produce a catalog of separate physical entities, whether individual documents or volumes of documents.Berner and Bettis 1970, 277If the operation of manuscript collections is to be guided by the two archival concepts regarding provenance and respect for the source that generated the record item (i.e., respect for the integrity of the records), then potentially all the types of nonmanuscript materials listed in the questionnaire should be kept with the manuscript group or record group. However, most manuscript collections are parts of a larger institutional complex such as a library or historical society and often have other special departments or units in which many of these record types will be normally acquired or wanted.Moseley 1973, 216The Schlesinger Library today includes—besides books, periodicals, audiotapes, microfilms, photographs, posters, and memorabilia—over two hundred manuscript collections. About thirty-five of them are from organizations and the rest are individual or family papers, some dating from the eighteenth century; collections increase in number and size from the middle of the nineteenth century.Rendell 1983, 307Archives and manuscript collections are [financially] appraised for four principal reasons: to determine the amount of tax deduction to which a donor is entitled, to determine the lair market value an institution should pay for a collection, to meet the requirements of settling an estate, and for insurance purposes.Burke 1997, 158The need to organize a manuscript collection imposes a burden on the manuscript archivist that can consume hundreds of staff hours, with many implications. In the realm of expertness, the processor becomes an expert in the life and activities of the subject of the collection.NLA 2005Although the literal meaning of manuscript is ‘handwritten,’ the Library’s manuscript collections cover all kinds of unpublished written records and many contain published and pictorial records as well. The kinds of records are extremely diverse: letters, diaries, notebooks, speeches, lectures, drafts of books and articles, research or reference files, cutting books, photographs, drawings, minute books, agenda papers, logbooks, financial records, maps and plans.Gunselman 2007, 152Manuscript collections include personal papers, records of businesses and organizations, congressional papers, and literary manuscripts. Most of these materials are paper based, but media such as audio recordings, film, and video are also present in some collections.Forstrom 2009, 477The number of manuscript collections containing electronic records acquired by the Beinecke Library has been increasing over the past several years, and, as the size and complexity of the digital component of archives increases, it will help to apply standards consistently in the management of these records.Huggard and Jackson 2019, 535For the purposes of this survey, “archival organizations” is an umbrella term meaning any organization that manages archives and manuscript collections.Bauer et al. 2023, 461By the end of nineteenth century, two other manuscript collections were obtained to support classroom teaching and scholarly research at the Syrian Protestant College: the Naufal Naufal collection of manuscripts (1893) and more than two hundred manuscripts acquired from the Syria Mission (1897) . . .synonym for manuscript repositoryLytle 1980b, 423Even fewer archivists have grappled with issues relating to a national information system for archives and manuscript collections.Phillips 1984, 32Collecting policies can also assist the curator in fulfilling the mission of the manuscript collection, but guidelines for producing such policies unfortunately have not yet been formulated. A method for dealing with the complexity of manuscript collecting should be devised.Burke 1997, 67Over time faculty and curriculum may change, and with them the collecting policies for the manuscript collection, leaving a residue of collections in an area no longer active. The collection then becomes attractive to outsiders who are pursuing research in a field where the university may have significant holdings but little institutional interest.
