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In the 1990s, the Houghton Manuscript Department staff began to create their own records for newly cataloged materials, using the former project specs as a broad guide to continue to input MARC collection-level records into both RLIN and HULPR. Throughout the 1990s, the staff streamlined these specifications, updating constantly as MARC developed, and combining Houghton historic descriptive practice where necessary. One of the MARC changes that produced a major difference for the US manuscript community came during “format integration” when archivists could, for the first time, pick the form of the MARC template most appropriate for cataloging based on the primary “type” of material being cataloged. Prior to format integration, all our MARC records were in the AMC-MARC format (which is now now referred to as the “mixed format”).
Between 2001-2006, the Manuscript Department conducted a complete retrospective conversion of all Houghton finding aids, which entailed updating or creating new MARC records for collections previously left-out or insufficiently described during the 1985 NHPRC project. At the close of this project, we had MARC records and finding aids for 100% of Houghton’s cataloged processed collections. However, it should be mentioned that during this project, the Harvard Theater Collection (HTC) paper cataloging records were NOT fully converted into online records. Only some of the HTC’s finding aids were converted, and many collections were still uncatalogedunprocessed and without collection level MARC records.
Other noteworthy dates in Houghton manuscript cataloging are:
2002 July, Harvard converted its cataloging system from HULPR to Aleph, leaving the public version still called HOLLIS.
2004, APPM was revised to DACS: Describing Archives: A Content Standard. Standard (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2004) replaced APPM as the US archival content standard.
2005 spring, RLIN converted to the RLIN21 system, with the public version known as Eureka.
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2013-2014, Another review/updating of the collection-level manual was completed with incorporation of a revised DACS.
2018 summer, Harvard Library moved from Aleph to Alma, a web-based ILS, local manual were updated accordingly.
Houghton also inputs single-item manuscript MARC records into AlephAlma/HOLLIS, and guidelines for creating those type of MARC records can be found in: Single-item Manuscript Cataloging Manual, Dept. of Technical Services, Manuscript Section, Houghton Library, 2013. A retrospective cataloging project was completed regarding the single items held at Houghton (NOTE: some classes will remain uncataloged undescribed due to language specialty limitations of our staff. These will be addressed as language specialists are available. Also HTC single items were not cataloged during this project and are yet to be done as of 2014).). In 2017, a retrospective cataloging project was completed for the Harvard Theatre Collection single-item manuscript. Over 250 records were added to the catalog.