union catalogues of mss in USA

Library of Congress gateway to library catalogues
web page for gateway access to LC's catalog and those at many other institutions.

site:www.loc.gov catalog - Google Site Search

National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections - Library of Congress
Cooperative cataloging program operated by the Library of Congress.

NUCMC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "NUCMC is the abbreviation for the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections. It is a national-level program based at the Library of Congress which seeks to promote free access to the documentary heritage of the United States. It does this by providing cataloging for archives and historical societies around the country which do not have access to national online databases.
The program started in 1959 and published bound volumes of cataloging records until 1993.
As of 1986, the cataloging records were input into RLIN, the Research Libraries Information Network, an international online database."

About Searching Manuscript Collections: National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), Library of Congress: "The Library of Congress provides Web interfaces for searching the NUCMC records online. Access is provided to both the RLG Union Catalog and OCLC. This service is provided free-of-charge. NUCMC staff can assist you with problems you might be having searching RLG and OCLC, but we cannot perform searches for you."


Definitions used in seaching the databases:-

• Research Libraries Group (RLG)
  A not-for-profit membership corporation of over 160 universities, national libraries, archives, historical societies, and other institutions with remarkable collections for research and learning. Rooted in collaborative work that addresses members' shared goals for these collections, RLG develops and operates information resources used by members and nonmembers around the world.
• OCLC
  A nonprofit membership organization serving 41,000 libraries in 82 countries and territories around the world.
• Archival and Mixed Collections (AMC file)
  Materials that are described according to archival descriptive rules, which focus on the contextual relationships between items and on their provenance rather than on bibliographic detail. All forms of material (including diaries, letters, business records, etc.) can be controlled archivally.
• Z39.50
  An information retrieval protocol that supports communication among different information systems. The maintenance agency for the protocol is the Library of Congress.
• Library of Congress WWW/Z39.50 Gateway From the NUCMC web site, it offers you seamless searching in the RLG and OCLC databases.
• Gateway
  The gateways to the RLG and OCLC databases using Z39.50 are an easy access entrance and searching those databases without having to use the RLG or OCLC searching forms or methods.
• Left-anchored search
  The search must begin with the first significant word in a name, title, or subject field, and continue with the search in exact order, as opposed to "word list" search where the words can be in any order

"While we catalog your materials in the RLG Union Catalog, to do the most comprehensive search of all archival and manuscript repositories holdings, you will need to search in both RLG and OCLC. Some archival and manuscript repositories catalog their materials in RLG, while others are members of OCLC and catalog materials there.

The Library of Congress only provides search access to the following materials in the RLG and OCLC databases: archival and manuscript collections; mixed materials (i.e., collections that contain two or more different types of bibliographic materials); and bibliographic materials that have been described using archival descriptive rules. The Library does not provide "free" access to search books or other types of materials in RLG and OCLC.

Library of Congress Online Catalog access to the collections resident at the Library of Congress.

site:www.loc.gov catalogue - Google Site Search with the english spelling

About RLG: " a not-for-profit organization of over 150 research libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural memory institutions. Our global membership has remarkable collections for research and learning. Founded in 1974 by The New York Public Library and Columbia, Harvard, and Yale universities, RLG provides solutions to the challenges presented by information access and management in the digital era.

RLG is governed and run by its members, staff and board of directors. "