The National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States (NIDS) was a project begun in 1982 by Chadwyck-Healey Inc. to reproduce published and unpublished finding aids to collections. Parts 1 to 3 of the project documented federal records (part 1), collections in the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress (2), and holdings of state libraries, historical societies, and archives (3). Part 4, which the records in this collection derive from, documented the holdings of academic libraries and other institutions. Each part was accompanied by a print or microfiche index. A similar National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United Kingdom and Ireland followed.
In the early 1980s, the MASC's finding aids were microfiched for part four of The National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States. This collection contains those microfiche sheets, although no index is present with the materials. While the majority of these finding aids should be online today through the MASC's website, these microfiche document the collections as they were held and described circa 1983.
The microfiche were formatted at 49 double frame, 105mm x 147mm microfiche, 24x nominal reduction.
The collection is maintained in the order the microfiche were received in, which is simply a numerical serial number (printed in the header area of the individual microfiche sheets) list starting at 4.28.1 and running to 4.28.497 (4 refers to NIDS part 4, Academic Libraries and Other Repositories, while 28 refers to WSU MASC, and each number 1 to 497 is a collection or accession). While there are occasional short alphabetical runs within the material, there seems to be no overriding organizational system to that numbering. An index, also on microfiche (and later on CD-ROM), was created as a guide to these, but the index is not present in MASC.
This collection is open and available for research use.
The content of the fiched pages is copyright Washington State University, while the arrangement of the pages on microfiche is copyright Chadwick-Healey Inc.
[Item Description] National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States: MASC Collections, Washington State University Libraries Microfiche, ca. 1985 (Archives 350)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The materials in this collection were presumably given to MASC at the completion of the project circa 1985 or so, and were never accessioned but simply stored in an office area.
This collection was processed in January 2015 by University Archivist Mark O'English.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.