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Recommendation
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Exclude Special Collections materials from Analytics-based annual statistic reports. Instead, Special Collections on each campus will report their own counts of materials for risk-management and other purposes.
<provide high-level summary that addresses needs and interests of Special Collections colleagues>
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Reasoning
Background
At this time, archival or manuscript collections are not effectively represented by counts of Alma item records with bibliographic resource type “Manuscript” do not effectively represent archival or manuscript collections. “Manuscript.” There are two ways that a count of items based on bibliographic resource type with current Alma data fail to provide useful information about Special Collections materials.
Overall measurement issues. Counts of items item records in Special Collections are wholly inadequate.
Item records do not exist at all for some materials This is true at Bancroft Library and other Special Collections units in the UC Libraries.
Online Archive of California records are not accurately represented in Alma. At UC Irvine, for example, Alma does not have item records that correspond to representations there.
Item records do not correspond to meaningful, standard archival measurements that are in use nationally and internationally. ARL, for example, asks for Manuscript Units.
Item records for containers are flawed measurements, because they canrepresent vastly different quantities and types of materials - from a single piece of paper to a large container with thousands of documents.
Inaccurately coded records are an issue. For example, Berkeley Bancroft Technical Services notes that many Alma items for Special Collection manuscripts are currently miscoded as type “book.”
Resource type at the bibliographic level does not provide meaningful information. Manuscripts and archival materials are sometimes coded as “collections,” and sometimes as “manuscripts.” Still images can be both “pictures” and “other,” due to coding as projected vs. non-projected graphics. On many campuses, counts of items with resource type “Manuscript” mostly show individually-catalogued theses and dissertations.
Risk management issues. Counts of items cannot provide an accurate or useful picture of the value of materials for insurance purposes.
For UCOP stats, HOSC has provided MU measurements because the insurance unit values table describes manuscripts as "Personal Manuscripts," "UC Archival Manuscripts," and "Other Manuscripts" -- all this translates, to HOSC since at least the last decade+, as archival/manuscript collections, not individual manuscripts. https://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Unit_value_2021.pdf.
For some materials, there is an existing distinction between UC archival collections and personal papers or other collected manuscripts that is recorded at the item level—not at the bibliographic level. Valuations have in the past been tied to this information, so any changes to tracking it should be in coordination with UCOP Risk Management.
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