In consultation with the curator if necessary, determine if any existing microfilm is still useful for research purposes, with procedures as follows:
Film to remain available for reference use
Microfilm that includes a complete, substantive bibliographic unit in the collection (e.g., a complete manuscript of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude) should remain available for reference use.
If the reel also contains other, less significant or substantive runs of material from the collection you have processed, do not delete that information from the online record, but update the information on that particular entry. The reel may also contain items from other collections, which may still be unprocessed; in this case, do not update the call number for the entire reel (see: “Updating Microfilm Records,” below).
Compare the film to the collection only if it is not clear from the database record what was filmed.
Film to be withdrawn from reference use
The following should be withdraw from reference use:
- Microfilm that contains only material that has been significantly rearranged during processing (e.g., correspondence), such that the content and order of material represented in the microfilm does not represent the current content and order of the manuscript collection.
- Microfilm that contains a manuscript item that the curator has decided to discard from the collection.
Microfilm reels withdrawn from reference use are not discarded. They are retained for security purposes. These reels are kept on the microfilm shelves but are not available to researchers. See Section 9.4.2.2.
Special cases
When a manuscript collection has been preservation microfilmed, in most cases the old reference copy will be superseded by the preservation copy. However, if loss of original text is known to have occurred since the earlier filming was done (e.g., portions of the Jonathan Edwards Collection), or if there is good reason to believe that loss of information may have occurred since the original filming was done, then the old reference film copy remains available for reference use. Consult the Head of Access Services with questions.