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Material within the Archives' holdings are organized or classified using the 'office of origin' or provenance approach. For example, the Record Group list for the University of Missouri Campus orders the various University offices and departments into Record Groups and Sub-groups based for the most part on where they fit into the administrative hierarchy of the University. Thus, for example, the Office of the Provost is a sub-group under the larger record group "Administration of Columbia Campus." The College of Arts and Science, on the other hand, has its own Record Group (Record Group 6) and the various departments such as Mathematics or Philosophy are Sub-groups within the College of Arts and Science Record Group. In general, the University Archives divides its holdings into 'UW:' Record Groups, which pertain to activities of the University's System-wide Central Administration, and 'C:' Record Groups, which pertain to the University's Columbia Campus. The Record Group list for the Columbia Campus can be found here: Columbia Campus. The Record Group list for the University-wide System can be found here: University-Wide. Each collection of materials in a Record Group or Sub-group receives a call number (also referred to as a collection number). The following example will illustrate this concept: The call number notation C:1/32/1 indicates (from left to right) the following: C -- that the record group belongs to the University of Missouri-Columbia campus as opposed to the entire University System, which is indicated by 'UW 1 -- Record Group 1, that is "Administration of Columbia Campus." 32 -- Sub-group 32, that is the Office of the Provost. 1 -- The first accession processed under this Sub-group. To use the Record Group list to access descriptions of actual collections in the University Archives, one must 'translate' the call number (e.g., C:1/32/1) into the location where the material is described on the University Archives' web site. To do this one needs to use the Kardex Concordance located at the following URL: Kardex Concordance. In the Concordance (either the 'C' or the 'UW' listing) one scrolls through the list until one finds the record group and sub-group one is interested in. At that point one can click on the links to go to the descriptions (either summaries or full inventories) of the material in that particular collection. Remember that in the call or collection number, the third number shows only the sequential order in which collections were placed in the specific record group and sub-group. Therefore, continuing the above example from the Office of the Provost, any call number or collection number with C:1/32/ will refer to material in some way originating in or with the Provost.   Search our Holdings

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Published by: University Archives muarchives.missouri.edu/
Revised: 09 January 2003
URL: https://muarchives.missouri.edu/rgexpln.html

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