National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)

Abstract

May 2009 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) program at the Library of Congress. NUCMC is a free of charge cooperative cataloging program, partnered by the Library and eligible repositories located throughout the United States and its territories, which provides and promotes bibliographic access to the nation's documentary heritage. The following questions will be answered in this article: Who qualifies for the program? How does the program work? What types of material are, and are not, cataloged by NUCMC? What type of descriptive information needs to be provided to NUCMC? In what ways does an institution benefit from participation in the program? How does the researcher benefit? Why is the program important?

KEYWORDS:

• cataloging
• archival materials
• manuscript collections

This article not subject to US copyright law.

Notes

1. The early history of the NUCMC program is well described in Harriet Ostroff, “The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections: From the Printed Volume to On-Line Data Base,” in The Hispanic Experience in North America: Sources for Study in the United States, ed. Lawrence A. Clayton (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992), 51–59.

2. The NUCMC printed volumes contained descriptions of approximately 72,300 collections located in 1,406 different repositories and approximately 1,085,000 index references to topical subjects and personal, family, corporate, and geographical names. For all intents and purposes the only electronic equivalent of the cataloging found in the printed volumes up to and including the 1985 volume (56,435 records) is ProQuest's Archive Finder, a subscription product that brings together ArchivesUSA and the cumulative index to the National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United Kingdom and Ireland (NIDS UK/Ireland).

3. For more information about New York's Documentary Heritage Program see http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/records/mr_hrecords_dhp.shtml

4. NUCMC catalogers create the descriptive portion of their bibliographic records in accordance with the U.S. standard adopted in March 2005 by the Council of the Society of American Archivists, Describing Archives: A Content Standard (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2007).

5. For the benefits of encouraging the wider use of archives see, Mary Jo Pugh, Providing Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1992), 9.

6. On the Record: Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (June 1, 2008), 1. The report is available in electronic form at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/lcwg-ontherecord-jan08-final.pdf. Associate Librarian Deanna Marcum's response to the report is available at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/LCWGResponse-Marcum-Final-061008.pdf

7. On the Record (June 1, 2008), 23.

8. From the mission statement of Library Services, Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/about/