In general, books arriving as part of a manuscript collection should be removed from the collection during processing. Appraisal of printed materials can be complex; there are often categories that are clear to processors, and then a wide swath of grey area. Workflow for working with printed material will often depend on the volume of material. Discuss issues with your team lead Kelcy and then with the Books Curatorcurators.
AS OF OCTOBER 2017, we are seeking to streamline work with printed materials and minimize the use of separation records in finding aids. Books that will be added to the Schlesinger's collections will be cataloged with provenance information retained as outlined below. Because of this, we no longer find it necessary to also list these titles in a separation record. What we do ask is that archivists appraise the printed material in a collection as part of the survey and processing plan and determine if there is literary or other rationale for retaining a list of books and other printed material.
...
Essentially, archivists are assessing and searching Hollis/OCLC for info on all these categories of books, but might want to separate them into relevant categories for Marylene's curatorial ease of appraisal.
1. Those volumes that are by or about the creator of the manuscript collection but are not currently in our collection (or, in some cases, may duplicate what's in our collection but be annotated or have some other compelling reason to keep and catalog them) are relatively easy for the processor to identify. Fill out a “Published Materials Separated from Manuscript Collections” form. These volumes can be cataloged as per the processor's recommendation; but the Books Curator should curators should still review them for her their general knowledge.
2. Books that are not by or about the creator but clearly fall into the Schlesinger Library collecting policy for printed materials can also be cataloged on a catalogers' recommendation. As above, the Curator curators should still review them for her their general knowledge. Fill out a “Published Materials Separated from Manuscript Collections” form.
...