Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Cultural Anthropology

The Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Cultural Anthropology (MCMCA) is a series of field notes in anthropology.  It was an attempt to deal with a perennial problem in the discipline:  field notes likely to be of enormous scholarly value are not normally published.  The series was started in the 1940s by Norman McQuown, Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Chicago.  For many years the Collection focused on Mesoamerican languages, McQuown's main area of interest.  Over the course of 48 years, its subject scope widened considerably, and it came to include unpublished literature of various kinds as well as field notes.  Long before anyone had dreamed of the Internet, the Microfilm Collection was a pioneer effort to preserve and disseminate a body of valuable scholarly material that might otherwise have vanished.  The Collection was microfilmed by the University of Chicago Library and is available for use on site in the Joseph Regenstein Microforms Reading Room and for loan via Interlibrary Loan. The Library does not hold copies of the original works. Reference questions about the Collection should be forwarded to the Ask a Librarian service.

Guide to the Collection

The Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Cultural Anthropology was a guide produced over the years as the titles were microfilmed.  The associated pages contain the last known index to the Microfilm Collection.  The guide contains citations for 411 items produced between 1931 through 1992.  Several indexes at the end of the guide were produced to help navigate through the Collection.  When the existence of an accompanying audio recording is known, the identifying information for that recording is noted at the end of the citation.  The guide has no separate list of the related audio recordings. 

Using the Guide

• Part 1 - Item List
  The 1^st part contains the listing for all the items included in the Collection. Each entry in the Collection is given a sequential item number. Item numbers range from #1 to #411 and are used to identify the item in the index and when ordering reproductions. Entries are also subdivided into 80 series numbered with Roman numerals. Several scattered numbers throughout the guide are blank and contain no information. To the best of our knowledge, this means that these numbers were never assigned or that the University of Chicago Library does not hold a microfilm copy of this title.
  
• Part 2 - Index
  The 2^nd part of the guide is a set of eight indexes and a brief list of abbreviations.  The indexes include:  contributors, institutions, areas, places, tribes, languages, Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, and Microanalysis of Speech and Body Motion.  Numbers that follow entries in the index refer to item numbers.

The Tables of Contents for each part of the guide are meant to aid online navigation through the PDF files by correlating ranges of item numbers with the range of page numbers where they can be found in the PDF document.