Early in the 1980s the staff of the university archives started to use computers to produce better finding aids. They developed a consistent format for inventories. They added inventories of individual manuscript collections or university record groups to a master database of finding aids, a database that also includes the collection-level descriptions in this guide and records of new accessions. They produced computerized versions of old finding aids and used computers to generate keyword indexes.
Archivists distinguish between archives and manuscript collections. The term archives applies both to the old records of an institution and to the office that has custody of them. Notre Dame administrators send files they no longer need to the archives; the files they send constitute part of the archives of the university. Any manuscript material that does not fit this strict definition of archival records belongs in a manuscript collection. Traditionally repositories have excluded archival records from published guides to their manuscript collections. This guide contains a list of our archival holdings but generally provides no more detailed description of them.
Although this guide emphasizes manuscript collections, it also contains descriptions of our microfilm, photographs, audio-visual material, and printed material. In most cases such material came out of manuscript collections, removed for purposes of preservation but still part of the manuscript collection from which it came. Although drafts of this guide often described such material in separate entries, I have included all material related to a given manuscript collection in the description of that collection. The papers of Michael Mathis, for example, include 46 linear feet of manuscript material, 15 audio tapes, 2 reels of movie film, 2.5 linear inches of photographs, 53 glass slides, 8 reels of microfilm, 1 filmstrip, and 1 linear inch of printed material.
The typical guide entry consists of the name of a collection, its dates, its extent, a note on what finding aids are available, a note on restrictions, an identification of the person or organization that generated the collection, a description of its contents, information on the languages used in the collection and its source, and finally its collection codes. The name of a collection is generally the same as the name of the person or organization responsible for accumulating the material in it. The extent of a collection is most often expressed in linear measure, an indication of how many feet (or inches) a collection takes up on the shelf.
The most common forms of finding aid are those mentioned above: a calendar contains summaries of individual documents; an item list mentions each document without summarizing it; a folder list contains the name of each folder, sometimes with a more detailed description of the contents of each; and an inventory generally contains introductory material to supplement the list of a collection's contents: a general account of the scope of the collection, a biographical sketch or an institutional history, a series outline revealing the structure of the collection, a description of the contents of each series, and indexes.
Any manuscript collection can have restrictions specified by the donor or by the university archivist. The lack of a note concerning restrictions does not guarantee that a given collection has no restrictions. Since many of our modern donors have signed contracts that sometimes contain complicated provisions, researchers who hope to use a collection should write or call in advance to find out if the collection is open for research. University records are generally closed for seventy-two years from the date of their creation; some, such as records of student grades, confidential letters of recommendation in student files, or financial records, may be closed indefinitely.
The last line of each guide entry requires a little more explanation. It contains the collection codes used to identify the collection in computerized finding aids. The first letter of each collection code indicates the type of material associated with the code; the other three letters indentify the collection itself. For example, the papers of Michael Mathis contain manuscript material (CMTH), audio-visual material (AMTH), photographs (GMTH), microfilm (MMTH), artifacts (OMTH), and printed material (PMTH).
Many people have contributed to the making of this guide. Since 1965 archivists at Notre Dame have been preparing collection-level descriptions such as these. Since 1974 they have been available to researchers who visit the archives in the form of typewritten drafts kept in three-ring notebooks. In the last two years, I have revised all of these drafts and have written a good many new guide entries. With the help of library faculty and staff, we have added the descriptions in this guide to computer databases and have sent them to the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections at the Library of Congress.
We still do not have guide entries for all of our collections. Some collections have not yet been processed, some are closed, some are of little significance outside Notre Dame, some do not lend themselves to collection-level description, and some have been omitted for other reasons. Following this introduction I have provided a list of university records held by the Archives, a list of collections described in our published guide, and a list of collections not described in our published guide. After the last guide entry I have placed an alphabetical index. Numbers in the index generally refer to guide entries; only those that begin with p. refer to pages. In order to avoid confusion between page numbers and guide-entry numbers, I have numbered only pages that do not contain guide entries.
Wm. Kevin Cawley
William.K.Cawley.1@nd.edu
Notre Dame, Indiana