Participation in the NUCMC Program
To be eligible to participate in the NUCMC program, your repository
and collections must meet the criteria outlined below. Once you are
determined eligible,
NUCMC catalogers will produce bibliographic records in OCLC WorldCat
and associated authority records
for your collections, based on data sheets that you provide
to us.
Eligible Repositories
You can qualify for participation in the NUCMC program, if
you are an archival repository:
- located in the United States or its territories
- open on a regular basis to researchers
- unable to contribute
national-level cataloging to OCLC WorldCat
Eligible Collections
NUCMC catalogs material on all subjects, in all languages, and
regardless of place of origin or date of creation. However, repositories
with collections consisting entirely of medieval manuscripts (that
were predecessors of books) are not
eligible.
In addition to these general benchmarks, collections eligible
for NUCMC must meet one or more of the following conditions:
- Archives are eligible,
provided that they are regularly available to the public
- Copies of manuscripts consisting
entirely of handwritten, typewritten, or photoreproduced copies
of manuscripts are eligible, provided
that the originals are:
- in private hands, or
- located
in more than one public repository, or
- located in a repository outside the
United
States, or
- located
in the archives of an institution ineligible for the NUCMC
program, or
- located in more than one collection within a single U.S.
repository
- Oral history records consisting
of tapes and/or transcripts of interviews are eligible.
- Non-textual collections may or may not be
eligible. Please contact
the NUCMC Team for more information concerning the eligibility
of these special
collections.
Additions to collections already cataloged by NUCMC
may be submitted at any time. Such additions could include
a URL (uniform resource
locator) linking the catalog record to a finding aid
on the World Wide Web.
General Definitions
The following terms, as defined below, are used to further describe
the types of material that are to be considered in determining
eligibility for NUCMC.
- Manuscript Collection:
- A group of papers (manuscript or typescript, originals
or copies of letters, diaries, accounts, logbooks, drafts,
etc., including associated printed or near-print materials
and sound
recordings) usually having a common source and formed by
or around an individual, a family, or a corporate entity, or
devoted to
a single theme.
- Item:
- A separable writing identifiable as a unit (e.g.: a letter,
diary, journal, ledger, minutes, or the like, in any number of
pages, and covering any time period).
- Archives:
- The formal and informal records that are generated by the administrative,
organizational, or operational activities of public bodies and
private organizations, together with documents received or collected
by them in connection with their activities.
- Oral History:
- A record of information gathered in oral form, usually on tape,
as the result of a planned interview.