Citing Your Sources

General Guidelines for Citing Materials from Archival Collections

Citation of documents in archival collections can be trickier than citations for publications, because you have to provide enough information about the document and the archival collection in which you found it and  the repository where that collection can be find   to allow someone read your analysis to find that document if they want to . The following is are are some guideline to assist you in cite your document :

For the document cite:

• author(s ) of the document .
• A title that identifies the document.
  • This is be might be on the document itself , such as a report or an essay .
  • If there is nothing resembling a title on the document, you will have to devise a title that is descriptive andmeaningful (examples: Letter to Alice Jones, Notes on a meeting to discuss the partition of Eastern Europe).
  • A date the document was created. This might be an actual day, a month, or a year, andyou may have to supply an approximate date based on context if there is no actual date on the document itself.
• Box andfolder ( or other container information ) where you find the document within the archival collection .
  • If there is a series number or an accession number these should be supplied as well, since they are often a critical part of returning to the correct box in an archival collection.

For each archival collection being used cite: 

• Title of the collection.
• Collection number or other identifier unique within the repository that identifies the collection. This information is frequently included in citations in parentheses following the collection title.

For the repository holding the archival collection being used cite (repositories often provide a preferred form of citation in access tools such as archival finding aids):

• Name of the repository.
• Name of the parent institution or geographic location of the repository if necessary to disambiguate the repository’s name from potentially similar institutional names.

For materials found online, whether on the open web or in locally licensed databases, providing a uniform identifier, such as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or Digital Object Identifier (DOI), that will lead readers of your work to the resource cited is a key element of your citation. This is covered in much greater detail , with examples, in CMOS17, 14.6 through 14.18.

In Bibliographies vs. Notes (Foot or End)

If you is using are using a bibliography  andfootnotes or endnotes (hereafter referred to as notes) in your research output, cite the archival collection andrepository only, not the individual documents from the collection, in the bibliography. In your notes cite individual documents anduse a consistent short form reference to the archival collection. This will allow your notes to remain concise anddocument-focused, while still providing your readers with information regarding the name andlocation of the archival collection in which you found the documents.

Bibliography examples:

Baker , George Pierce , Pageants Collection ( DRA 16 ) .   Special Collections , Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library , Yale University .

Johnson, James Weldon, andGrace Nail Johnson Papers (JWJ MSS 49). Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Records (MS 1965). Manuscripts andArchives, Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.

Note (short form) examples:

1. Claude A. Barnett, letter to Grace Nail Johnson, 27 June 1942, Series I, Box 25, Folder 14, Johnson Papers.

2. The Oxford Historical Pageant Book of Words, 1907, Box 1, Folder 7, Baker Collection.

3 . Executive Committee meeting minute , 7 April 1988 , Accession 2016 – M-0061 , Box 4 , folder 10 ,   NRDC Records .

If using foot- or endnotes only (no bibliography) cite the archival collection fully in the first relevant note, using a consistent short-form reference to the archival collection citation in subsequent notes.

Notes only (no bibliography) examples:

1. Letter from Rudolf C. Bertheau to Ellsworth Huntington, 29 August 1938, Series IV, Box 29, Folder 296, Ellsworth Huntington Papers (MS 1), Manuscripts andArchives, Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.

2. Report to the Board of Directors of the Human Betterment Foundation, 12 February 1935, Series IV, Box 29, Folder 299, Huntington Papers.