Archival Research

There are two ways to search for catalog records for rare books. The first is to use the "Archives" tab on the library webpage, which will return results from the library catalog limited to Archives & Special Collections and the Amherst College Digital Collections.

The second is to search Discover, then turning on the filter for “Amherst College Archives and Special Collections” under “Library Locations” on the left menu, which will limit your search to physical books.

The catalog record has a few important places to look for the people, time, and place of the rare book:

Some parts of a catalog record are intuitive, but other terms may be hard to understand. Here is a quick guide to understanding what information you can find in different sections of a catalog:

1. Edition: Roughly synonymous with "version"; different editions may have different content or physical characteristics
2. Physical Description: Page count, illustration information, and physical size in centimeters
3. Document Type: Genre [e.g. fiction, comics, poetry]
4. Subject Terms: Pulls together related material from across collections
5. Abstract: Summarizes the material
6. Content Notes: Table of contents, creates keywords to make the record more searchable
7. Notes: Notes may contain physical, provenance, and collection information
8. Other Authors: Includes foreword, editors
9. ISBN: International Standard Book Number
10. LCCN: Library of Congress Call Number
11. OCLC: WorldCat Call Number
12. Accession Number: Assigned to each item in a library’s collection in order of when it was acquired
13. Call No.: Indicates where the book can be found in the archives’ stacks
14. Status: Indicates whether or not the material is available to be retrieved

(Definitions adapted from the Dictionary of Archives Terminology.)

Call numbers are used by librarians and archivists to retrieve material from bookstacks. This ‘number’ can also include letters, not just numerical values (e.g. “F592.7 .V69 1998”). 

When requesting material, it is useful to include prefixes, which may live under the “Location” header, to ensure that the staff pull the right material. Common prefixes might include “File” or “Original Library”.