Current practice is to separate most accompanying books from manuscript collections upon acquisition, following curatorial review, and transfer them to Printed Acquisitions. These books are either discarded (i.e. exchanged for credit with a dealer) or cataloged separately by the Rare Book Cataloging Unit, with appropriate provenance tracings.
Heavily-annotated printed items, however, and a variety of printed pamphlets and other ephemera (clippings, invitations, etc.) may be kept within the archival collection. Consult the curator and your supervisor for guidance. Any separately-cataloged printed item returned to a manuscript collection must either have its MARC record deleted or, in the case of records retained, modified to reflect the item’s new location in the collection. Refer such cases to the Cataloging Coordinator.
Options for books found in manuscript collections:
- Transfer to Printed Acquisitions to be accessioned and routed for cataloging, or discarded
- Retain in place in the collection and describe along with other material in the finding aid
- Retain in the collection to be cataloged in situ by the Rare Book Team
As part of the accessioning process for books, miscellaneous manuscript material found laid into the books is often removed. This material ranges from ephemera and receipts to substantive correspondence. It is returned to the Manuscript Unit accessioning staff when Printed Acquisitions staff has finished accessioning all the books from a particular collection, and is usually filed with an existing accession for that collection. Sometimes, due to volume, it may be treated as a separate accession.