With all of the philatelic resources that we have here at the APRL, getting an idea of what we have that pertains to your research needs can seem a bit daunting. This is where the Philatelic Union Catalog comes in handy. Located on Library home page of the APS website, you will find, “The David Straight Memorial Philatelic Union Catalog.” In this catalog, you can perform a search of your topic and a list of sources that pertains to your search will appear. This catalog is shared with many other philatelic libraries in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. There are a few key things one should know when utilizing the catalog to ensure that your search and its results are as accurate as possible.

For now we will focus on understanding the different material types. When using the Philatelic Union Catalog’s advanced search function, you will notice that one of the drop-down options in the advanced search fields is “Material Type.”

Having an idea of the different material types that you may encounter while searching on the Philatelic Union Catalog can prove to be useful for the researcher. The most popular types that you will typically come across are: “Book”, “Article”, and “Journal.” It is important to remember that most of the material types are independent of each other when searching. For example, “Article” refers to the title of an article in a journal, while “Journal” refers to the name of the journal as a whole. Searching for a Journal won’t tell you which articles are available, but will tell you if the APRL has that journal in its collection. Searching for “Article” will tell you about the articles within the journals, but won’t tell you if the APRL or another library has those journal issues.

In some cases, a resource may have two or more material types. This is typically used when we have a material that is available in digital form as well as physical form. In some cases the E-resource may have been sent to the APRL via a CD or USB drive and is not available online., but in general, you can often use the material type E-Resource to determine whether something is available digitally, and also use “Journal” “Exhibit” “Book” etc. to continue to narrow the search. Please note: Using E-Resource & Article will not work at this time, as we have not been able to check all of the articles and mark whether or not are available online. For the time being, check the Journals record to determine if an article that you are interested in might be online.

If you know what type of material you are looking for, you can use “material type” as one of the criteria when using the Advanced Search function. You should use the material types as written below. For APRL resources, the following material types will work for the majority of the materials in the catalog. 

• Archival material is used for the APRL archives; personal papers, photographs, artifacts, society records, and unpublished collections (these are non-circulating collections and can only be used in house. In some cases we can scan small sections of archival material.)
• Auction Catalog is used for individually cataloged Named Sales only.
• Auction House is used to keep track of all library holdings for a particular auction house.
• Article is used for finding materials in the article index maintained by the APRL- please note that the Article index is meant to be used as a research tool, and does not guarantee that the APRL or another library in the Philatelic Union Catalog has the article in their collection.
• Book is used for all books, catalogs, monographs, pamphlets, etc. Use “Book” unless you know that the resource that you are looking for is a different material type on this list.
• E-resource is used primarily when a library resource is available in part or in whole online. Click into the catalog record to find a link or a pdf.
• Exhibit is used for copies of philatelic exhibits. These could be either physical photocopies or digital copies that are available for free online in the Hisey Collection of the Mason digital library. To find the digital exhibits, put both E-Resource and Exhibit in the Material Type field.
• Government Document is used for US and international government documents- primarily postal service related.
• Journal is used for all philatelic periodicals, newsletters, magazines etc.
• Show program is used for philatelic show programs and exhibition catalogs.

Some additional material types that are used less frequently by the APRL are:

Video Recording ; Videocassette ; CD ; DVD ; Album ; Price List ; Ephemera ; Map ; Sound Recording.