Rare Books as Collections: Description Standards for Collections of Books that are Archival in Nature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University
This paper looks at current and legacy cataloging practices for collections of rare books with archival elements at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It considers three types of “archival” rare book collections: 1) the personal libraries of writers; 2) personal (research) collections; and 3) large collections of related materials. In considering eight representative collections from two institutions, it answers the following question: How do past and current description practices for “archival” rarebook collections in two ARL libraries in North Carolina compare to the way recent scholarship has proposed these types of collections be described? This paper develops a clear picture of how these types of rare book collections are made visible at these two institutions.Master of Science in Library Scienc
