Archival sources include letters, unpublished manuscripts, limited-circulation brochures and pamphlets, in-house institutional and corporate documents, clippings, and other documents, as well as such nontext materials as photographs and apparatus, that are in the personal possession of an author, form part of an institutional collection, or are stored in an archive such as the Archives of the History or American Psychology at the University of Akron or the APA Archives.
This general format may be modified for collections requiring more or less specific information to locate materials, for different types of collections, or for additional descriptive information (e.g., a translation of a letter). Authors may choose to list correspondence from their own personal collections, but correspondence from other private collections should be listed only with the permission of the collector.
As with any reference, the purpose is to direct the reader to the source, despite that fact that only a single copy of the document may be available and the reader may have some difficulty actually seeing a copy.
Include as much information as is needed to help locate the item with reasonable ease within the repository. For items from collections with detailed finding aids, the name of the collection may be sufficient; for items from collections without finding aids, more information (e.g., call number, box number, file name or number) may be necessary to help locate the item.
If several letters are cited from the same collection, list the collection as a reference and provide specific identifying information (author, recipient, and date) for each letter in the in-text citations.
Use square brackets to indicate information that does not appear on the document. Use question marks to indicate uncertainty regarding names and dates; use ca. (circa, not italicized) to indicate estimated dates (see Example 67).
For interviews and oral histories, list the interviewee as the author. Include the interviewer's name in the description.
If a publication of limited circulation is available in libraries, the reference may be formatted as usual for published material, without the archival source.