Retrospective Accessioning of Unaccessioned material

Staff will sometimes find themselves working on an item that came into the library a long time ago (more than a couple of years) and has never been accessioned. (A good example of this is boxes of old Widener transfers that Widener never itself accessioned.)

Materials received in the past which have never been accessioned should be accessioned for the current year, with the note “Old acquisition” added to the subfield $$c of the 541 in parenthesis for the material. Accessioning staff can provide an appropriate number. The three options are:

$$c Purchase (old acquisition) …

$$c Gift (old acquisition) …

$$c Provenance unknown (old acquisition) …

NOTE: (1) This is in contrast to earlier practices, when at one time the initials "n.d." would be used in the 541 subfield $$e and at another time the accession number would have an "r" added to the end of the number (e.g. *2007-143r); (2) These instructions do not apply to old Widener transfers that were accessioned at Widener.

Unaccessioned bound-withs that should have been assigned accession numbers in the past should be assigned an accession number based on the accession number of the first item: if first item is 87-495, the bound-with is 87-495a (not 87-495b), the second bound-with is 87-495b, and so forth.