The following terms can be used as titles, form/genre subjects*, digital object types, and in narrative notes. This list should be consulted when writing any descriptive information about our collections.
Items can be described multiple ways based on the field it is being used. While these terms may be used in titles, subjects, and narrative text, see Instances and Guide to Extent Types for additional guidance in defining forms for other fields. For audiovisual materials, choose less granular formats that are not carrier specific, as they may be reformatted. Eg., video recording instead of videotape or sound recording instead of 45 rpm records.
Photograph example
- Folder title: Geri Applewild portrait photographs
- Subject: Photographs.
- Scope and content note: Contains 40 professional portrait black and white 8x10 silver gelatin photographs of Applewild from ages 20 to 89.
- Instances > Type: Photographic material
VHS example
- Folder title: Water related class experiments video recordings
- Subject: Experiments
- Scope and content note: Comprises 2 VHS cassette tapes labelled, "water experiment 1" and "water and sand experiment."
- Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements note at folder level: Material in this folder is housed on magnetic media that may require reformatting prior to researcher use.
- Physical Description: (2 VHS cassettes)
- Instances > Type: Moving Images
| Format | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 45 rpm records | Phonograph records, invented by the RCA company in the mid-20th century, which eventually replaced 78-rpm records in terms of production and popularity. | AAT |
| 78 rpm records | Phonograph records played at 78 revolutions-per-minute, the standard playing speed for records until the mid-20th century. The maximum length of play per side was 4 1/2 minutes, and they appeared most commonly in ten-inch and twelve-inch formats. | AAT |
| Account books | Books in which financial accounts are kept. | AAT |
| Administrative records | Records that relate to budget, personnel, supply, and similar facilitative operations within an organization. A document that has been preserved because it facilitates the operations and management of an agency, but which does not relate directly to programs that help the agency achieve its mission. Administrative records are common to most organizations. Examples include routine correspondence or interoffice communications; records relating to human resources, equipment and supplies, and facilities; reference materials, routine activity reports, work assignments, appointment books, and telephone logs. | SAA |
| Albums | Books with blank pages used for assembling and presenting a collection, or any unpublished sets of pages that are bound or loose-leaf and have other materials affixed to them or writing or other images made on them. The volume may have been constructed with blank pages that were intended to have materials affixed, or it may have been assembled after having had materials affixed to separate pages. | AAT |
| Appointment books | Books for recording engagements; usually containing calendars | AAT |
| Architectural records | Records documenting the design and construction of buildings or other structures. | AAT |
| Articles | Literary compositions prepared for publication as an independent portion of another work | AAT |
| Audiocassettes | Cassettes of audiotape. According to international standards, the tape is usually 0.15 inches (3.8 millimeters) wide and can carry 4 to 8 tracks. | AAT |
| Audiotapes | Sound recordings on magnetic tape. | AAT |
| Awards | Honors conferred or bestowed, usually including a document or token indicating or symbolizing the award, or remuneration. | AAT |
| Blueprints (reprographic copies) | Reproductive prints of architectural plans, maps, mechanical drawings, and other technical drawings, characterized by having white images on blue backgrounds and produced by the blueprint process. For blue images on white backgrounds, use "blueline prints." For blue-toned photographs produced by the blueprint process, use "cyanotypes." | AAT |
| Building plans | Orthographic drawings, prints, or sketches that depict a building, or sections of a building, on a horizontal plane. | AAT |
| Books | Items comprising a collection of leaves of paper, parchment, wood, stiffened textile, ivory, metal tablets, or other flat material, that are blank, written on, or printed, and are strung or bound together in a volume. | AAT |
| Brochures | Printed or graphic material intended for promotional or publicity purposes, such as small printed works describing the features or amenities of a place, an organization, or other concern. | AAT |
| Calendars | Registers of days or other contrivances for reckoning days, months, years, etc. A listing of dates, usually with notations of relevant events Use Note May also be used as a form/genre term. Do not confuse with "schedules." | C&U |
| Catalogs | Enumerations of items, such as a file of bibliographic records or a list of art objects, usually arranged systematically and with descriptive details; may be in book or pamphlet form, on cards, or online. Catalogs are created according to specific and uniform principles of construction and usually under the control of an authority file. | AAT |
| Clippings (information artifacts) | Illustrations, pages, articles, or columns of text removed from books, newspapers, journals, or other printed sources | AAT |
| Compact discs (CD) | Optical disks on which sound recordings, data, or programs, are digitally encoded for a laser beam to scan, decode, and transmit to a playback system, computer monitor, or television set. | AAT |
| Correspondence | Any forms of addressed and written communication sent and received, including letters, postcards, memorandums, notes, telegrams, or cables. See also Personal correspondence. | AAT |
| Course notes | Class notes created by a faculty member in the course of teaching a class (or for the purposes of teaching a class) | Local |
| Curricula | Courses and their content, offered at a school or university. | C&U |
| Diaries | Refers to books containing the daily, personal accounts of the writer's own experiences, attitudes, and observations. Use "journals" when referring to an individual's or an organization's account of occurrences or transactions | AAT |
| Digital images | Electronic images stored in the form of electronically encoded picture elements | AAT |
| Digital object | The smallest unit of digital content such as a single document or image that represents the original physical artifact (Local); A unit of information that includes properties (attributes or characteristics of the object) and may also include methods (means of performing operations on the object). (SAA) | SAA |
| Drawings (visual works) | Visual works produced by drawing, which is the application of lines on a surface, often paper, by using a pencil, pen, chalk, or some other tracing instrument to focus on the delineation of form rather than the application of color | AAT |
| DVDs | Optical disks the same size as compact discs, but designed to hold approximately seven times more digital information, including multiple layers, most often video | AAT |
| Family papers | Personal papers of members of a single family; usually of parents and their children, but sometimes including papers of spouses and their families as well | AAT |
| Field book | Notes, often in books, kept by researchers while on site | AAT |
| Field notes | Notes, often in books, kept by researchers while on site | AAT |
| Field recordings | Documentary recordings, often for professional or research purposes, which are generally made outside a professional studio or venue | AAT |
| Financial records | Documents pertaining to money matters. | AAT |
| Grant proposals | Documents that outline formally and in detail a project or endeavor, and that are submitted to an entity capable of bestowing funding to realize the project described. The intended audience may be a government agency, a private foundation, or other corporation. Grant proposals are written on behalf of individuals, non-profit organizations, charities, companies, or educational institutions. | AAT |
| Graphic materials | Generally, two-dimensional pictorial representations whether opaque (e.g., prints, drawings), or intended to be viewed, or projected without motion, by means of an optical device (e.g., transparencies). Photographic materials are not included in this category by local practice. | Local |
| Images | In a general sense, refers to all depictions and representations of an object, building, person, animal, plant, place, or phenomenon, whether the optical counterpart exists in reality or only in imagination. The term may have more narrow meanings in specific contexts. It may refer to a depiction as in distinguished from its support, for example, when referring to a drawing as distinct from the paper upon which it is drawn. "Depictions and representations on a surface in two dimensions or low relief, or digital, whether the optical counterpart exists in reality or only in imagination. For example, the term may refer to a depiction as distinguished from its support, as when referring to a drawing as distinct from the paper upon which it is drawn. For a representation of an object as opposed to the tangible object itself, as when distinguishing between a photograph or digital image and the art object depicted, use the descriptor "visual surrogates" or the UF "images (visual surrogates)." For three-dimensional works, use "objects" or a more specific term, such as "sculpture (visual works)."" | AAT |
| Interviews | Statements, transcripts, or recordings of conversations in which one person obtains information from another such as for research purposes, publication, or broadcast. | AAT |
| Journals (accounts) | Books containing accounts of an individual's or organization's occurrences or transactions, including records of financial transactions. Use "diaries" when referring to personal accounts of the writer's experiences, attitudes, or observations | AAT |
| Laboratory notebooks | Notebooks used in laboratories to make notations and calculations regarding experiments and observations | AAT |
| Leaflets | Small printed works consisting of one sheet folded and not stitched or bound. For larger printed works, but generally of fewer than 80 pages, often with paper covers, use “pamphlets” | AAT |
| Lecture notes | Notes made with reference to a lecture, both those from which the lecturer speaks, and those taken by people in attendance. | AAT |
| Ledgers (account books) | Volumes of final entry in accounting in which are entered debits, credits, and all other money transactions under each individual account or heading | AAT |
| Legal documents | Documents having legal relevance in general. For documents that give expression to a legal act or agreement for the purpose of creating, securing, modifying, or terminating a right, or for the purpose of furnishing evidence of a right, use "legal instruments." | AAT |
| Letters | Pieces of correspondence that are somewhat more formal than memoranda or notes, usually on paper and delivered | AAT |
| Letter books | Books of blank or lined paper on which letters to be sent have been written; also copies of letters, originally on loose sheets, bound together, usually in chronological order | AAT |
| Letterpress copybooks | Volumes containing reproductions of correspondence, made directly from originals through a transfer process. Using a screw-powered letter press in conjunction with a press book, a bound volume of blank, tissue paper pages. Letters written in special copying ink were placed on a dampened page. The book was then closed and the mechanical press screwed down tightly, causing the ink to be transferred to the bound page. | AAT |
| Logs | Records in which are entered sequential data, especially about activities or transactions that occur in a system | AAT |
| Long-playing records | Phonograph records originally invented by Columbia Records, first introduced in 1948. The records have a rotational speed of 33 1/3 rpm (revolutions per minute), and have very fine grooves. They, along with 45 rpm records, replaced 78 rpm records in popularity. | AAT |
| Magazines | Periodicals containing articles, essays, poems, or other writings by different authors, usually on a variety of topics and intended for a general reading public or treating a particular area of interest for a popular audience | AAT |
| Manuals | Books, usually of compact size, containing concise information, often rules or instructions needed to perform tasks or processes. Do it yourself manuals - Books or treatises containing rules or instructions needed to perform methods of building, modifying, or repairing something without the aid of experts or professionals. | AAT |
| Manuscripts | Handwritten documents, and may also be used to distinguish certain documents from published or otherwise printed documents, as in the cases of typed personal letters or a typescript from which printed versions are made. | AAT |
| Maps | Refers to graphic or photogrammetric representations of the Earth's surface or a part of it, including physical features and political boundaries, where each point corresponds to a geographical or celestial position according to a definite scale or projection. The term may also refer to similar depictions of other planets, suns, other heavenly bodies, or areas of the heavens. Maps are typically depicted on a flat medium, such as on paper, a wall, or a computer screen. For similar depictions on a sphere, see "globes (cartographic spheres)." | AAT |
| Memoranda | Documents recording information used for internal communication | AAT |
| Microfiche | Flexible, transparent sheets of film bearing a number of micro images arranged in horizontal rows and vertical columns, normally having an identifying strip legible without magnification | AAT |
| Microfilms | Fine-grain, high-resolution film in roll form containing images of documents, reduced in size from the original | AAT |
| Microforms | All media used to record microimages. | AAT |
| Minutes | Records of what was said and done at meetings or conferences | AAT |
| Negatives | Photographs in which the tones or colors are reversed from their appearance in nature, usually on a transparent support of celluloid, acetate, or on paper, intended for the purpose of producing positive prints. For finished prints in which tones or colors are reversed, see "negative prints." When a glass plate is painted or drawn on and a photographic print made from it, use "clichés-verre." | AAT |
| Newsletters | Letters, reports, or other brief written communications that communicate news, particularly those written by societies or business organizations. Historically referred to serial publications consisting of one or a few printed sheets containing news and information of interest to the general public or to a special group | AAT |
| Newspapers | Serials published at stated, frequent intervals, such as daily or weekly, and containing news, editorials, features, advertisements, and other items of current interest. | AAT |
| Notes | Brief statements of a fact or experience, written down for review, or as an aid to memory, or to inform someone else; also includes short, informal letters | AAT |
| Obituaries | Published notices of a death, usually with a brief biography of the deceased | AAT |
| Oral histories | Works that record interviews conducted to preserve the recollections of persons whose experience or memories are representative or are of special historical or social significance | AAT |
| Pamphlets | Complete, nonperiodical printed works generally of fewer than 80 pages, often with a paper cover, sometimes short treatises on arguments or topics of current interest. For smaller printed works, of one sheet folded and not stitched or bound, use "leaflets" "Independent publications consisting of a few leaves of printed matter folded or fastened together but not bound, often with no cover or a paper cover. For smaller printed works, of one sheet folded and not stitched or bound, use "leaflets." " | AAT |
| Papers |
| SAA |
| Patents | Grants made by a government to an inventor, assuring the inventor the sole right to make, use, and sell the invention for a certain period of time | AAT |
| Periodicals | Publications issued at regular intervals, but not daily, containing articles on various subjects by different authors for the general reader. | AAT |
| Personal archives | A collection of personal or family documents. Used generically to encompass materials in a variety of formats, including manuscripts, typescripts, clippings, photographs, and born digital. | Local |
| Personal correspondence | Correspondence, typically written letters or notes, from one person to another. | AAT |
| Personal papers | Private documents belonging to an individual. For records kept by public officials or other persons for their private or personal use but relating to their official duties, use "office files" | AAT |
| Personnel records | Records maintained by an organization for each of its employees giving personal details and information relating to their service. | AAT |
| Photocopies | General term for copies produced by photocopying, that is, in a machine employing a light-sensitive process, and usually at a one-to-one scale. In the early to mid-20th century, used regarding copies made by various specific processes; since the mid-20th century, most often refers to xerographic copies. | AAT |
| Phonograph records | Discs (formerly cylinders) of shellac, polyvinyl chloride, or other substances so prepared that sound is reproduced when played on a phonograph | AAT |
| Photographs | Refers to still images produced from radiation-sensitive materials (sensitive to light, electron beams, or nuclear radiation), generally by means of the chemical action of light on a sensitive film, paper, glass, or metal. Photographs may be positive or negative, opaque or transparent. The concept does not include reproductive prints of documents and technical drawings, for which descriptors found under "<reprographic copies>" are more appropriate. The concept may include photographs made by digital means. | AAT |
| Photograph albums | Albums made up of mounted photographs, with or without identifying information | AAT |
| Photo CDs | Compact discs on which large numbers of photographic images can be stored and viewed | AAT |
| Postcards | Cards on which a message may be written or printed for mailing without an envelope, usually at a lower rate than that for letters in envelopes | AAT |
| Postcard albums | Albums made up of mounted postcards, with or without identifying information | AAT |
| Posters | Notices intended to be posted to advertise, promote, or publicize an activity, cause, product, or service; also, decorative, mass-produced prints intended for hanging. For small printed notices or advertisements intended for distribution by hand, use "handbills" | AAT |
| Presentations | Spoken or visual representations of information, such as speeches, demonstrations, and slide shows, for the purpose of achieving favorable visibility and persuading an audience to believe or support the presentor's ideas, projects, or goals | AAT |
| Presentation albums | Albums designed to be dedicated or presented to a person or organization | AAT |
| Press releases | Official or authoritative statements distributed to the press typically by a public relations firm or government agency. For packets of promotional material distributed to the press, use "press kits" | AAT |
| Proceedings | Records of meetings, conferences, learned societies, or other organizations, usually published, and frequently accompanied by abstracts or reports of papers presented. | AAT |
| Professional papers | Documents amassed in the course of the execution of a vocation, career, or occupation, including correspondence, memos, official forms, etc. | AAT |
| Programs | Brief outlines or explanations of the order to be pursued, criteria for participation, or the subjects embraced in a given event or endeavor. Includes lists of the features composing a dramatic or other performance, with the names of participants | AAT |
| Proposals | Includes offers by one person or organization to another of terms and conditions with reference to some work or undertaking and plans or schemes put forward for consideration, discussion, or adoption | AAT |
| Publications | Documents distributed to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending | AAT |
| Realia | Generally, refers to all physical objects or physical phenomena not produced by humans. The universe of physical objects is often divided into realia, which are naturally occurring objects and phenomena, and "artifacts, " which are human-made objects and phenomena. Specifically, in library classification systems, realia are physical objects that are not the books, periodicals, or sound recordings typically cataloged by libraries. Specifically, in education, realia are objects from nature, home, or otherwise from real life that are used in classroom instruction. | AAT |
| Records | Recorded information, regardless of medium, created, received, and maintained by an agency, institution, organization, or individual in pursuance of its legal obligations or in the transaction of business | AAT |
| Registers | Official lists of entries of any information considered sufficiently important to be exactly and formally recorded, typically maintained in numerical or chronological order in a regular manner | AAT |
| Reports | Official or formal records of a special investigation, in the form of documents containing presentations of facts, proceedings, investigations, or events. | AAT |
| Reprints | Generally, reproductions of printed matter, either new editions or new impressions from the same setting-up of type or plates of the original. Use specifically with reference to articles, chapters, or other portions of previously published larger works, printed separately subsequent to the original publication, usually but not always from the original type or plates | AAT |
| Research materials | Recorded results of diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject made to discover or revise facts, theories, or applications. | AAT |
| Reviews | Reports or essays giving critical estimates of a relatively recent work, performance, or event. For other critical descriptions and analyses, prefer "criticism" | AAT |
| School records | Lists of students' names and records of grades, disciplinary issues, and other information pertaining to the education of a student in a given school | AAT |
| Scrapbooks | Blank books or albums designed so that a variety of items may be affixed to the pages, including photographs, clippings, and other memorabilia. | AAT |
| Sheet music | Music printed on unbound sheets of paper | AAT |
| Sketchbooks | Books or pads of blank sheets used or intended for sketching | AAT |
| Slides | Positive transparencies in mounts suitable for projection, usually 35mm film in a mount of 2 by 2 inches. An image on film or glass, usually positive, intended to be viewed by means of light passing through the image and base using a viewer or projector. | AAT |
| Sound recordings | Discs, tapes, filaments, or other media on which sound has been recorded. This is the preferred term for describing audio materials in titles. | AAT |
| Souvenir programs | Programs produced and distributed to mark special events, usually more lavishly designed and printed, and with more detailed contents than regular programs | AAT |
| Speeches | Documents containing the text of any public address or talk | AAT |
| Student handbooks | Publication created by MIT about student conduct. Portable books, treatises, or compendiums, covering one or more subjects, arranged for quick location of information and of a size such as may conveniently be held in the hand. | C&U |
| Student publications | Publications created by students. | C&U |
| Student records | Records relating to students, often restricted for 75 years from date of creation, could contain personnel information, transcripts, application materials, correspondence, biographical information. | C&U |
| Students’ notes | Course or lecture notes taken by a student during a class. | C&U |
| Surveys | Documentation of examinations or inspections conducted in order to achieve a comprehensive view, as of a place, a group of related items, or to ascertain condition or value. For sets of questions submitted to a number of persons to obtain information, use "questionnaires." For detailed lists of items on hand, or of items in a given category, use "inventories". | AAT |
| Technical reports | Reports giving details and results of a specific investigation of a scientific or technical problem | AAT |
| Transcripts | Use both for copies transcribed from an original text or document and also for written records of words originally spoken, such as of court proceedings, broadcasts, or oral histories "Written, printed, or typed copies of an original text or of words originally spoken, such as of court proceedings, broadcasts, or oral histories. Transcripts are extremely accurate copies with any editorial explanations or notations clearly distinguished from the original, including indications of misspellings or editorial omissions. For less formal copying, or for short documents or single words such as in a vocabulary, use "transcriptions."" | AAT |
| Transcriptions | Written versions of oral language or music, or written copies made of other written documents, either in longhand or on a machine. | AAT |
| Transparencies | Images designed for viewing by transmitted light. Most often refers to transparent positive photographs; can also refer to transparent nonphotographic images that are designed for projection viewing or as intermediates for reproduction. | AAT |
| Typescripts | Copies of a work in typewritten form, as distinguished from those in printed or handwritten form. | AAT |
| U-matic | Proprietary name for an analog videocassette format developed by Sony in 1969, using 3/4" tape with a running speed of 3.75 inches per second. The format was popular in semi-professional industrial, educational and broadcast contexts from the 1970s until the advent of digital video technology. | AAT |
| VHS | Describes videotape one-half inches in length (12.7mm); this videotape format, known primarily as VHS (Video Home System), was developed in the 1970s for use with home videocassette recorders. It contains 240 lines of horizontal resolution. | AAT |
| Videocassettes | Cassettes containing recordings on videotape. | AAT |
| Videodiscs | Optical disks on which still images, moving images or sound are recorded in an analog format. The images can be displayed on a video monitor, such as a television attached to a videodisc player, which may be controlled by a computer. Prior to the introduction of compact disks, which also use a laser to read the data, videodiscs were sometimes referred to as "laser disks." For the digital versatile disc format specifically, use "DVDs." | AAT |
| Video recordings | Refers to manifestations of motion pictures, stored electronically, in any media. This is the preferred term for describing moving images in titles. | AAT |
| Videotapes | Magnetic tapes on which visual images are electronically recorded, with or without sound. | AAT |
| Volumes | Refers to collections of written or printed sheets bound together so as to form a book. It may also refer to a separately bound portion or division of a written work or series that is divided into two or more sections, each contained in a separate binding; generally, multiple volumes of the same work or series are of similar dimensions and contained in similar bindings "Objects comprising sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or another material that are bound together. Volumes may include printed books, manuscripts, sketchbooks, or albums.... Objects comprising sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or another material that are bound together. Volumes may include printed books, manuscripts, sketchbooks, or albums." | AAT |
| Writings | Broadly used for the written works by an individual or a specific group of individuals. For the body of writings of a particular nation, region, period, or language, of a particular form or genre, on a particular subject, or for a particular audience, use "literature (writings)" | Local |