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Appraisal Considerations and when When to Talk with the Curators
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- For published materials that are owned by other libraries at Harvard, consult with the curators whether we should also have a copy at the Schlesinger.
- For published materials that are outside of Schlesinger’s scope but important to the archival collection itself, you may retain them within the archival collection rather than having them cataloged separately. If the items are not important to keep in the collection, box them together and create only one separation form for the box indicating in the notes field that all the materials in that box are out of scope. The Head of Published Materials will then review for possible donation.
- When you are ready to have a consultation with the curators, e-mail them at curators@radcliffe.harvard.edu
- Note: even when not consulting with the curators on specific titles, send the curators or an individual curator (whichever makes the most sense to you) an e-mail just to inform them of what items are going to the Published and Printed Materials Department. They may be interested in using these items for future instruction, outreach, or programming.
Post Printed Materials Review
- Once all decisions are made and you are ready to transfer materials to the Published and Printed Materials Department:
- All materials separated from a single collection should be transferred together at one time.
- Place materials on the black cart outside the Head of Published Material’s office and notify her.
- The Head of Published Materials will give items to appropriate cataloger
Finding Aid Description
Archivists should 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.
All published materials that will be added to the Schlesinger's printed materials collections will be cataloged with provenance information retained in their ALMA holdings record. Because of this, we no longer need to list these titles for books or periodicals in a separation record in the finding aid. Note: In most cases for newsletters/serials the serials cataloger will indicate the donor and the specific issues donated in the provenance field. But this may not always happen depending on the extent of issues. Check in with the serials cataloger about this. If this is not going to happen, you can list the titles and issues in the finding aid's Separated Materials Note.
Finding aid examples:
In most cases the archivist will add a general statement in the Separated Materials Note to alert researchers that published materials have been removed and cataloged separately. E.g. "Published materials that were removed from the collection have been transferred to the Schlesinger Library books and printed materials collection and have been cataloged separately."
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