Own photocopies

Dear editor,

I have been working on a one-place-study in collaboration with another researcher. We both made copies at the archives, all marked with citations to the original source. He has now passed away and I have inherited his collection. I would like to know how to cite these photocopies. 

In the case of using the photocopies that he created, "cite what you use" plus section 7.19 say that I need to cite the fact that it is a photocopy and how it came into my posession. That makes sense since I never handled the manuscripts myself and cannot vouch for it being where he said it was.

Would the situation be different if I used one of the photocopies that I made myself? In that case I handled the actual record although in most cases I did not actually study it at the repository as I am gathering entire volumes. I think most researchers that use manuscripts do a lot of their work of image copies that they created themself and I have never seen any reference to photocopies or digital photographs created by the researcher in peer-reviewed journals. Since I handled the original record, know that it existed and how it was referenced, and what the contents were, I think it would be safe to cite the original. Of course, I may have missed a page, so working off the copies I created introduces a small risk of errors compared to working from the original, which would argue for putting a note in.

My own way to handle this is to include a note about using the photocopies in my research notes, but leave that off for publication. Would that be a prudent strategy?