Archives: Reading Room Procedures

Visitors to our supervised Reading Room must sign a Register upon arrival. Staff are available to discuss research projects, direct researchers to appropriate finding aids, and retrieve documents, special collections or rare books from the closed stacks. Request slips are used to obtain documents, rare books or theses.

Special care must be taken when working with unique and irreplaceable archival materials:

• All notes are to be taken using pencils, not pens or markers; outlets for lap-top computers are provided.
• Coats and backpacks are to be left in the coat rack area.
• No food or beverages are allowed in the Reading Room.
• Documents must be refolded along original fold lines.
• Note-taking paper must not be placed on top of documents and then written on.
• Only two boxes of papers will be retrieved at a time.
• The existing order and arrangement of file folders in a box, and of papers in each file folder, must be maintained.
• Cotton gloves will be provided for handling photographic material and other textual documents as necessary.
• Lastly, the Archives Reading Room is a place for quiet academic study using specialized materials. Cell phones must be turned off. If you need to discuss projects or research with another person, a separate place for you to work may be provided so that other patrons are not disturbed.