The collection descriptions begin with the Title of the collection, which is typically named for the person who collected the papers. Therefore, sets of correspondence are typically named for the recipient, not the author, of the letters. The Harriet Kendall Papers, for instance, are a set of letters from many different people to Harriet Kendall.
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. If it is a two-way correspondence, meaning both sides of a correspondence are present, both people receive equal billing (see the Metcalf-White Papers). If a collection of letters includes letters written to and from many different people in a family, the collection earns the "family papers" designation. Family papers often span generations and include many branches, which might or might not be represented in a title. More than two names starts to get pretty ponderous, and at the Clements, we only occasionally do triple names -- for instance, the Myers-Mason-Bailey Family Papers. If a family name does not appear in the title of the collection, it will still show up in the index, and can be located by performing a search on the web site, or in the Library's card catalog (yes, we still maintain one of those).
The other element of the title is the birth and or death dates for the people the collection is named after, if it is indeed named after only one or two people, and if the dates are known.
After the title, other Basic information is provided: the form is designated (most collections are called "Papers"), the date span of the collection (which might include "bulk dates" if there is a significantly larger clump from a shorter period of time within the span), where the people were writing from (if there is one particular place), and the size of the collection, given either as a number of items or measurement in linear feet -- or sometimes both.
Next is the Background note, which provides biographical information about the people represented in the collection, as well as a general overview of the context in which the documents in the collection were created. This information is compiled from the collection itself and any easily accessible, relevant reference books.
The Scope and content note lays out (more or less exactly) what is in the collection; letters (to whom, from whom), journals, ephemera, poetry, or whatever else there might be. This is also where the broad themes that prevail in the content of the materials are described. The Wadsworth family papers, for instance, are dominated by the letters of an anxious widow to her son's young family in faraway Michigan. The scope and content note is also where us catalogers at the Clements can really go to town, and present the subject matter that we found most fascinating. Unlike some archives, we do not pretend that our descriptions present an objective lens through which the researcher may view the collection. Since subjectivity is unavoidable, we make a point of pointing out both broad themes and tiny details that particularly strike us, and occasionally even suggesting possible interpretations. This approach also makes the descriptions a heck of a lot more fun to write -- and one can only hope -- to read.
References are precisely that -- citations for sources other than the collection itself that the cataloger used to enhance the collection description. "See also" references might also be listed here to direct the researcher to related collections either at the Clements or at other institutions.
Next on the screen is the Subject index, which is compiled by using standard Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), with just a few local headings (i.e. created on the spot as a last resort, when nothing in LCSH adequately describes the subject I want to flag). So far, the only local headings are Dancing Costume, Flirting, Pregnant women--Cravings, Sleigh rides, and Social calls. The index is the most idiosyncratic section of the collection descriptions. Depending on the collection, there might be only collection level subject headings -- with either "passim" underneath it (meaning "throughout"):
OR with nothing in between it and the next heading:
This will be standardized before the project is finished.
Many subject indexes currently have a combination of collection level (referring to the collection as a whole) and item level (referring to a specific manuscript) subject headings. If there is only specific mention of say, a pregnant woman drinking beer in one or two letters, it is far more convenient to tell the researcher which two letters, within what might be a very large collection, contain this information. The subject index will include the names of people mentioned in the manuscripts -- either singularly, if they are important enough (Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865) or by family name, if there are lots of them mentioned, or they were not well-known (Tracy family).
The next section of the collection description is the Names file, which is either labeled Correspondents if it is a collection of letters, or Name index if it is a journal. Correspondents may be divided into Primary and Secondary Correspondents, if there are a large number of letter writers represented in the collection, but only a few with a concentrated correspondence. With journals, the Name index, or Family name index, lists people who are related to or relevant to the author's life. Important names that appear within either letters or journals will be listed in the subject index.
The final bit of the description includes the date the library acquired the material, the accession number (which looks like M-3021.2), the initials of the cataloger, and the date the collection was described.