About the records

Administrative Information

The archival materials documenting the life and work of M.J.D. White are divided into two groups. The first is based on his insect collection and cytology microscope slides and includes the relevant diaries, notebooks and maps that document the collection of insect specimens. These materials are lodged at the National Insect Collection, CSIRO Division of Entomology, Black Mountain, Canberra, and a copy of the list, with a detailed description of the diaries, compiled by the Australian Science Archives Project, is to be found in Series 11 of this guide. All other materials comprising correspondence, publications, photographs, slides, working files and draft manuscripts have been deposited with the University of Melbourne Archives. The unfortunate shuffling of some sections of the papers made sensible arrangement of the collection difficult though this was finally achieved, as far as possible, through careful and detailed listing of the files, and the comprehensive index prepared by Doug McCann.

Note: This Guide contains a Career Summary, a Table of Contents and record series summary, the detailed description of the files, an Index and Abbreviations. Throughout the Handlist the "File Title" is, as close as possible, a transcription of the title given by the creator of the file. Extra description of the file is given in square brackets. The Handlist and Index are a guide to the collection and not a comprehensive reflection of its contents.

• The records have been allocated to 11 series. The codes used to uniquely identify each series range from 01 to 11.
  
  
• Through the processing of the records, 1 provenance entity was identified. The code used to uniquely identify this provenance entity, i.e. records creator or custodian, is WHP0001.
  
  
• The inventory covers 3,344 items, and may include records of continuing value, records sentenced for destruction and records that have been destroyed. The codes used to uniquely identify each inventory item range from 01/001 to 11/20. The total collection occupies 358 linear cm of shelf space (or its equivalent).
  
  
• The documentation of the records at inventory level started on 4 April 2000. The latest additions were made on 5 May 2004. The latest modifications were made on 9 July 2007. This collection profile was updated on 15 November 2007.