The Charlotte Mason Digital Collection operates under the umbrella of the Peter Turkstra Library at Redeemer University. This database operates on the OCLC WorldCat system for data input, editing, searching and retrieval. In creating the records, effort has been made to reflect the provenance and integrity of the original collection while providing detailed description and specific access. Cataloguing was done according to standard library practices, using AACR2-Revised, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), LCSH Name Authorities, as well as the Canadian Bureau of Archivists, Rules for Archival Description(RAD). Key elements of the records such as location, date, title, names, and subjects are searchable individually and in combination with each other.
- Unit records: Each record represents a cmc or pneu folder, following the provenance of the collection. The database records describe only the items selected for digitization. In many cases this will not reflect the folder as a whole. Usually folders include multiple items with multiple pages. The images are labeled as follows: page # , item #, folder # -- e.g. p3i2cmc25. The database records also indicate the shelf location in the Armitt Library & Museum (i.e. box # for each folder). Occasionally, if a folder had very many items, it became necessary to split the unit record – i.e. to use more than one record to describe the contents of a folder. Appropriate links were made between all the records describing one folder.
- The structural hierarchy of the collection is as follows:
- Collection: (Charlotte Mason Collection as a whole)
- Boxes: 60 Charlotte Mason boxes (identified as CM1-CM60) and 22 PNEU boxes
- Folders: (several folders in each box, numbered consecutively from one box to the next, identified with a cmc# (for Charlotte Mason Collection) and pneu# (for PNEU boxes). E.g. Box CM1 contains folders cmc1-17 and box CM2 contains cmc18-31. It seems that these original folders were arranged loosely by subject, and sometimes also chronologically within a folder.
- Items: individual letters, photographs, manuscripts, and documents which were selected for digitization.
- The individual jpg images were converted to high resolution pdfs with multiple pages – representing a single multi-page item. The higher resolution jpgs are available upon request.
