Archives and
Special Collections
Acquiring Materials
Items are acquired in order to be informed of events in the College community. It is important to collect all issues of The Rotunda, the student newspaper, student publications such as the Gyre, and items such as The Freshman Record. The Library acquires copies of all informational flyers and newsletters such as The Faculty Bulletin and On Campus, the campus newsletter for the collection. These are available online at http://www.longwood.edu/news/default.htm.
When the college catalogs and handbooks are distributed, it is important to acquire two copies of each for Archives.
At
the beginning of the fall semester, a letter is mailed to all student
organizations asking them to consider sending their flyers, brochures and
minutes to the Library to be housed in Archives.
The Library seldom gets a response, but it is important to make an effort
to acquire information about campus organizations and activities.
The
minutes of the faculty's Senate and Academic Affairs committees must be kept.
The are sent to the Archives and Records Manager via email from the Vice
President for Academic Affair's office, and Susan May, who
is Chair of the faculty Senate. They
are printed and downloaded to a disk as well.
The disk is housed in the Archives and Records Manager's office and is
kept in a disk storage box with other archival-related materials that are on
disk. This storage box is located on
a shelf in the Archives and Records Manager's office.
Jennie
Hayden sends the minutes of the Board of Visitors meetings to the Library
at the discretion of the College President.
We do not have to ask for them.
Email
messages related to college activities, events, students, faculty, and staff are
printed out and filed in the box in the Archives and Records Manager's office.
Longwood Student Theses
The
Library receives two copies of all theses written by Longwood students.
They are received by the Archives and Records Manager.
There is a form kept at the Circulation Desk that the author/student must
fill out when submitting their work to the Library.
The form contains the number of personal copies to be bound, a phone
number and an address where the copies are to be mailed once they return from
the bindery. The form is also the
Library's record of the transaction.
Send
an e-mail message to both the faculty advisor and the Registrar A.
Knox, to let them know that the student has turned in their paper to the
library.
Once
the theses return from the bindery, the Serials Assistant gives them to the
Archives and Records Manager who checks to make sure the items have been bound
correctly (materials in correct order, no missing pages, correct spelling on
spine of book, faculty signature page in correct place).
Departmental
copies are to be delivered to the department and handed to the departmental
secretary. The personal copies are
packed in mailers or a box, depending on the number of copies being mailed, and
prepared for shipping. The packages
to be shipped are left on the mail table along with other items being picked up
by UPS. Do not use a post office
box number as a shipping address.
Copies
that remain in the library are cataloged by the Archives and Records Manager so
that they will appear in the OCLC and ILS databases.
These require original cataloging which means a record must be designed
and a call number and subject headings assigned to this title.
The cataloging is based on AACR2R (cataloging rules) and adheres to the
standards set for MARC format (the machine-readable format).
The
circulating copy will have the call number written on the verso of the title
page. A bar code will be placed on
the thesis (see the Acquisitions Assistant) and the bar code number will be
entered into the ILS, thus attaching an item record to the bibliographic record.
The
copy for the Special Collections Room has an acid-free tag inserted into the
thesis. The bar code is placed at
the top of the acid-free tag instead of on the thesis.
Under the bar code, write the author's last name and the year that
appears on the outside of the thesis. On
the opposite side of the tag, write in Longwood
Student Thesis, and under this write the call number assigned to this title.
In recording information on the tag, use a pencil and NOT a pen.
The tag should look neat, professional, and be easy to read.
It the tag becomes separated from the book it helps to have the author
and date included on the tag under the bar code.
Processing of Solicited Materials
All
solicited materials acquired during a semester are filed in folders in an
acid-free box in the Archives and Records Manager office until the end of the
semester. At this time the items
are counted and filed in the Special Collections Room.
The
name of each group of papers in a folder is recorded with the number of
individual pages or items that are in the folder.
There
are file cabinets located in the Special Collections Room that house this
collection of materials. The
cabinets are labeled accordingly.
During
the summer, one copy of The
Rotunda, the student newspaper, is readied for the bindery and one copy will
be microfilmed. They must be put in
chronological order, the order in which they
are to be bound. They must be
secured in a folder or with some type of enclosure that will keep the papers
together in one unit. They can be
banded together, but rubber bands should not be so tight as to tear the paper.
They are then given to the Serials Assistant
who works with bindery materials. The Assistant returns
them to the Archives and Records Manager's office when they return from the
bindery.
Receipt of Unsolicited Materials
Often
the Library receives papers and print items such as Longwood reports and
committee minutes. There is a form
located in the Archives folder in Archives and Records Manager's desk drawer
that should be filled out when materials arrive.
It is a record of what was received, who donated the item, and the date
the material arrived in the library. This
form is used when offices send the Library materials and no acknowledgement is
required. When a faculty member or
non-Longwood person donates materials, an acknowledgement is sent to them and
this may serve as documentation of the item in lieu of filling out the form.
Processing the Materials
Materials
in different formats and for different collections require different treatment.
Boxes
of files and records from offices on campus are filed in the storage boxes at
the back of the basement expansion area. On
the outside of each box, document the office from which they originated, the
date they arrived in the Library and a brief description of what type of records
are in the box. These are the
types of materials for which we need a form completed so that we will know what
we have and don't have in this collection.
Often, people forget what they have asked us to keep, and this form is
useful in tracking such transactions.
Collections
of materials given to us by faculty members often relate to the Department in
which they worked, their committee work, or special activities in which they
were involved. A decision will have
to be made as to whether the materials should be considered a separate
collection and processed as a unit, or whether the materials should be broken up
and filed with other similar materials. For
example, boxes often contain college catalogs and faculty handbooks.
These materials would be more useful with the other catalogs and
handbooks -- no one would go to Dr. Susan Mays papers looking for a college
catalog.
Papers
of an archival nature such as committee minutes require special treatment.
They should be placed in acid free folders in chronological order, the
folders labeled, and the boxes labeled.
A simple finding aid or listing of what is in the box and/ or boxes
should be created when working with the papers.
The materials must be counted in order to know the volume of papers in
the archival collection.
Materials
that arrive without any order, that have rusty paper clips and staples holding
items together, and that are falling out of old yellow folders require special
attention. Rusty clips and/or staples must be carefully removed.
Papers must be removed from old folders, placed neatly into acid-free
folders and boxes. Folders and
boxes must not be filled to overflowing.
OUR
GOAL IS TO PRESERVE THE MATERIALS AND TO ARRANGE AND INDEX THEM IN A WAY THAT
MAKES THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE COLLECTION ACCESSIBLE TO POTENTIAL USERS.
Using
a number 2 pencil, neatly label the folder with a brief description of what it
contains. The folders should be
numbered consecutively. Record the
folder number and a description of what the folder contains on a lined legal pad
as you work through the folders. This
handwritten record will be transferred over to a disk as time allows.
A copy of this list of what is contained in a box or group of boxes that
make up one special group of records/papers should be placed in a folder at the
front of the box and the folder should be marked "Index to ________".
A copy of this record should also go in the notebook that is kept in the
Archives and Records Manager's office.
The
final step is to produce an acid-free label and place it neatly on the outside
of the box or boxes.
THESE
FIGURES ARE COMPILED AT THE END OF THE FISCAL YEAR AND THE RESULT IS GIVEN TO
THE LIBRARY'S FISCAL AGENT.
Special
Collections are housed in the room with the Longwood archival materials.
The Library has the following special collections:
Faculty Publications
Virginia Authors and Virginian Collection
Special Signed Books
Rare Book Collection
Edward Gorey Collection
Papers of Francis Butler Simkins
Papers of Richard Couture
Papers of Rosemary Sprague
The Vincent Persicetti Collection
The Droessler Collection
A collection of materials on the Closing
of the Schools in
It
is the Archives and Records Manager's responsibility to see that faculty
publications are ordered and that one copy is placed in Special Collections.
Information about new publications is available online (where?)
under "News and Events." Once you are at this page, click
on "In Print" which is where recent faculty publications are listed. The
copy that goes in archives must not be labeled with either a call number or bar
code. The call number and bar code
will be placed on an acid-free tag that will be placed inside the book.
The bar code should be placed at the top on one side of the tag.
On the opposite side of the tag, record the call number under the label Faculty
Publication . Write this
information in with a pencil--DO NOT use a pen.
ASSISTING
PATRONS WITH USE OF MATERIALS is
a priority. Because the Special
Collections Room is closed to the public, Library staff provides assistance in
helping library users find information. Materials
from this room cannot leave the Library and users
are allowed to take the materials to the Reference Room for photocopying.
Items taken from Archives must be documented and returned to the Special
Collections Room or to the Archives and Records Manager's office. Only
authorized or staff-supervised users are allowed in the Special
Collections Room. If unsure of what
is needed, it is best to bring materials for users to peruse in the Reference
Room.
Yearbooks
are available at the Circulation Desk. The
student newspapers are on microfilm and housed in the blue cabinets at the back
of the Reference Room. A run of old
college catalogs are housed on one of the shelves in the Archives and Records
Manager's office.