Basic format:
Genre-appropriate MLA citation.
Name of the Collections or group of records,

Span dates of the collection or group of records,

Manuscript or record group, or accession number,

Unit within Special Collections holding the materials (in our case, this is “Penn State University Archives”

“Special Collections LIbrary, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University”

Example: Doe, Jane. Letter to Sarah Doe. 02 Feb. 1959. The “A Few Good Women” Oral History Collections, 1938-2000, MGN 984, Penn State University Archives, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

Identify the specific item (you might have to use a brief descriptive phrase if your item doesn’t have a title or publication information that you can cite) using MLA format citation for that piece (if it’s a letter, look up how to cite a letter, etc.). If you have it, then you can list information about the box and folder it came from. If you know that it came from a specific group of records (like the “A Few Good Women” Oral History Collections), you can list that–but you might not have that information since Doris pulled everything out for us ahead of time. List the accession number if you have it, then the last two elements (listed in bold above) will be the same for all of you.

If you’re working with articles from the digitized Daily Collegian or La Vie, then you will treat it like a web source coming from a database. You’ll cite the article just as you would any other newspaper article, then you’ll label it as a web source and list the database it came from (Historical Digital Collegian Archive or La Vie Online). 

Use your resources online and in your textbook to figure out how to cite unfamiliar sources. Do your best with the information that you have!