Collection

  • The act of seeking or identifying the location of source material for the purpose of acquisition, in some form of a print or digital copy, for research purposes.

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“Document collection was a challenge at the Martha Washington Papers Project. Because her letters are so valuable as collectibles, we discovered many at online auction houses—including eBay. There were few large archives of her letters, Mount Vernon probably holding the biggest collection. Most were part of smaller collections at a variety of archives, one at a small apothecary museum in Alexandria. Many were in the hands of private owners and descendants, which required some digging to find. Despite being a relatively small number of letters, the process of seeking out and cataloguing the documents was time consuming.”

Kathryn Gehred, The Papers of Martha Washington