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Re: Small Collections



On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Joy Kingsolver wrote:

> These collections are often too small to have a guide--some contain
> one or 2 items only. They really are miscellaneous.  My first plan
> was to do a MARC record for each collection, but the time involved
> made me hesitate. (This repository has a staff of one--me.)  The real
> alternative is to do no MARC records at all and leave them in a local
> database, which is the way I'm leaning at the moment.
> Thanks for your comments.

Seems to me that this should really be a content appraisal issue and
not a size issue! I've seen some 1 or 2 item collections that are
dyn-O-mite and certainly warrant the time and effort of a MARC record.
Then the $10,000 question becomes ... if a 1-2 item collection isn't worth
your standard access-provision protocols for your collections, is it
really worth keeping? Better in a vertical file with topical access,
treating the vertical file as you would a collection? Good appraisal
guidelines for your collections might be one tool to use in helping with
this decision.

Bill

--
Bill Landis__________________________|_____________________blandis@uci.edu
Manuscripts Librarian                |                   The UCI Libraries
Department of Special Collections    |            University of California
949 824.3113                         |                      P.O. Box 19557
949 824.2472 FAX                     |              Irvine, CA  92623-9557

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