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What is a Finding Aid?

Finding aids, or collection guides, are descriptive inventories, indexes, or guides that archives create to describe and provide access to the contents of the collections that they hold. These guides are tools that researchers can use to gain access to archival materials. A finding aid functions much like the preface and table of contents of a book, in that it reveals the origin, background or context, contents, and arrangement of a collection. They are often used to determine the relevance of a collection to a specific topic and the parts of that collection that are most relevant to the topic.

Although collection guides vary from institution to institution, most guides contain the following elements:

• Overview of Collection
  This section of the collection guide includes contact information for the archives (repository) that holds the collection as well as general information about the collection, including the title, the collection number (used to identify it at each archives), the dates of the materials in the collection, the size of the collection (quantity), and a summary description of what the collection contains.
• Biographical Note or Historical Note
  A short biography or history is included in every collection guide. This narrative provides background information and context for the collection.
• Content Description
  The content description provides a summary of the contents of the collection. This section may also include comments on the arrangement of the collection and the kinds of materials (such as correspondence or diaries) that may found in it.
• Arrangement
  This section provides a brief description of the way the collection is arranged. This description may be a paragraph or a list of the subgroups (or smaller collections within the collection) and series (or types of materials, such as correspondence) into which the collection is organized.
• Administrative Information
  This section contains information regarding the acquisition and use of the collection, related materials, restrictions on using the collection, and various other notes that may be of interest to those who want to use the collection to conduct research. This section also contains information on the owner of the copyright in the collection, which is important if you plan on publishing any portion of it.
• Subjects
  Subject headings, like those found in a library catalog, are provided for each collection in NWDA. These headings reflect the topics covered by the materials in the collection.
• Detailed Description of the Collection
  The collection description, often called the inventory, provides a folder (or in some cases an item) listing of the contents of the collection. In most collection guides, the detailed description will follow a general order of: subgroup, series, and folder. The box and folder number (which appear on the left-hand side of the screen) are used to locate the materials. Although this section contains the actual inventory to the contents of the collection, it is important to read the front matter, too (especially the Historical Note, Content Description, and Arrangement) to understand the context of the items.

 

 

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