Re: Inventory
"Why did the school not have an inventory?
A fair question but, having worked for an institution that regularly received such donations, I can sympathise.
Very few donations of papers, photographs and the like come with a detailed description. More commonly you receive several cardboard boxes of completely unsorted material without any details of what you are getting.
Descriptions such as "Uncle Podger's papers", "Contents of desk" and "1877" are often all you get, which is why each unsorted box normally gets given a unique number.
Sorting, cataloguing and conserving these boxes then has to wait until people are available, and it is not uncommon for researchers to assist in doing this.
I suspect the school was not in a position to carry out such a procedure, as they would understandably have different priorities.
This is also why most major collections will not allow anyone access to their material until the necessary security checks have been undertaken.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
