Articles

The Indirect Approach: A Study of Scholarly Users of Black and Women's Organizational Records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

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Abstract

Archivists need to understand better the uses to which archival materials are put, and the role of documentation in the final product. This is especially the case for scholarly research which results in publications that can be systematically analyzed to reveal patterns of use. As one of the largest and most heavily used manuscript repositories in the country, the Library of Congress holds a wealth of information for studying the scholarly use patterns of manuscript collections. An analysis of the scholarly use patterns of thirteen collections of black and women's organizational records over a ten year period revealed that 123 users had published 168 books. Close examination of eighty-five of these books indicated that only thirty-one authors made extensive use of the archival documentation available for their research topics. The results of this study support the findings of other studies of archival use among scholars and suggest that if archivists paid more attention to the users of their collections, current archival administrative practices would need serious modification.

How to Cite:

Goggin, J., (1986) “The Indirect Approach: A Study of Scholarly Users of Black and Women's Organizational Records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division”, Archival Issues 11(1), 57–67. doi: https://doi.org//archivalissues.10535