Historical material should not be mailed or dropped off without first consulting with the staff a repository must evaluate all material offered and ask the donor to sign a deed of gift. Digital directories and files should have names that indicate content or subject matter. Photographs, tapes, and films should be identified. Generally, repositories are more interested in a coherent body of material rather than individual items, and they prefer to receive the original items rather than copies. To be historically significant, materials need not be organized they need not be “old” and they need not relate to a famous individual, event, or organization. Most repositories accept donations of as little as a single item and as large as dozens of boxes or terabytes of digital files. Digital materials should be backed up regularly. To ensure the preservation of materials for potential transfer to a manuscript repository, items should be kept in a cool, dry, temperature-stable environment. In future years, researchers-including students, professors, genealogists, journalists, and many others-may thus find your records both interesting and of value to their work. Equally important, it can provide research access to the contents of the records, both to you and to others. A repository can provide the materials with environmentally controlled, secure physical and digital storage and can oversee their proper handling and use. If your personal or family records are deemed appropriate for a repository’s collection, and you agree to donate those materials, you stand to gain many benefits. Most repositories have a collecting policy that informs their decisions about what to accept. In addition, once you donate your records, the staff will continue to work with you as you locate or identify other materials to donate. These professionals will discuss with you the historical significance of your records and advise you which repository would be best for your records. Such repositories ensure that these personal and family records will be available for research by generations to come.Ī manuscript repository is run by professionals-archivists, curators, or librarians-whose priorities are the selection, the preservation, and the accessibility for research of historical materials. Manuscript repositories-also called archives, historical societies, and special collections libraries- carefully preserve collections of written, visual, audible, and electronic material created by private citizens both past and present. What Is a Repository and What Can It Do for You?
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When you donate your personal or family records to a manuscript repository, your family history becomes a part of your community’s collective memory.
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Whether or not members of your family attained a degree of fame, they have contributed to the heritage of a certain place and time. These materials obviously matter to you, and they may be important to your community, state, or nation, too. Letters, emails, diaries, photos, and other material accumulated over the years give vital and unique information regarding your life or the history of your family. Through letters, diaries, and unpublished writings of many types, and also through the audible, visual, and electronic records of recent times, researchers have been able to study and understand much about the history of particular families, communities, businesses, and organizations, the history of specific events and broader societal trends, and the history of the United States in general. Personal Histories Preserved for Community Memoryįor millennia, written records have provided essential clues to the past. Ideal for handing out to prospective donors, this smartly designed color brochure is available in print for purchase in bundles of 25.