11/6/2009
Since 1959, NUCMC has produced more than 116,000 bibliographic records describing manuscript collections at 1,759 repositories. Read about the 50th birthday of this genealogical essential.
Librarians generally aren’t considered the partying type, but the occasion of National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections’ 50th anniversary had them raising glasses in the Library of Congress’ James Madison Memorial Building.
To create NUCMC (“nuk-muk”), as the catalog is called for short,
Library of Congress staff members enter information about manuscript collections of participating US libraries into the WorldCat library catalog search engine—making those entries searchable by you.
Since 1959, the NUCMC program has produced more than 116,000 bibliographic records describing collections of historical papers, letters and diaries held by 1,759 repositories. Libraries don’t pay a cent to participate, but they reap the benefits of their collections’ improved accessibility to patrons.
Until 1985, the NUCMC catalog was produced only as printed volumes. (Your library may have the volumes on paper or microfilm.) The
NUCMC Web site gives you an interface to search catalog entries made since 1986. Since 2006, you also can search these and other library holdings
on the WorldCat site.
From the December 2009 Family Tree Magazine