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| Table of Contents |
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Introduction
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As your collections grow, it may be necessary to begin to provide more metadata and descriptions to aid viewers in locating and understanding what they are engaging with and perusing.
A finding aid (or guide) is a document that assists in systematically describing and organizing series and folders in collections for patrons and archivists alike. It may be a tool for you to begin to implement for your archive that builds off the work you have already done.
The majority of the content in a finding aid is metadata and information you have previously documented. In this format, it is repurposed along with additional sections to be a sort of descriptive inventory and map for people to use for a given collection.
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The following describes what is necessary to successfully begin making a finding aid for a collection..png?version=1&modificationDate=1616006054000&cacheVersion=1&api=v2&width=500)
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Organizational Arrangement
To describe the structural order of how your collection is designed, you will need to have a pre-established or nearly functional organized arrangement to describe.
In general, an an archive is organized by by collections, which in turn are divided into into series and and folders. These different levels are important to recognize and differentiate as you create a finding aid. You do not want to crossover and combine too many unrelated contents in a series and then jumble and have duplicate information across collections either.
Narrowing down the range that your finding aid will cover is dependent on the collection's own organization. You want to be able to accurately describe the contents without overfilling and providing too many details to be useful. It will be helpful to ensure that there are are no floating documents or unfiled, unprocessed materials that that should be organized within existing categories and that your categories themselves are clearly defined.
Consistency Across Series and Collections
While finding aids do not tend to span across collections, they do contextualize and describe series within a given collection.
You need to make sure that filenames and labels are are consistent across series and folders. Regularity in naming assists in navigation and makes locations more predictable for people trying to understand the organizational structure.
If a series describes numerical entries, someone would not expect to find that all contents within are actually labelled with a mix or numbers and letters in some unsystematic way (e.g. 120aee-Ben.wav, 124aee-BC.wav, 02aea-B.wav versus A0013-BC.wav, A0014-BC.wav, A0015-KF.wav)..png?version=1&modificationDate=1616006111000&cacheVersion=1&api=v2&width=500)
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Communication
As you may have many people working at once on your DiGI project, it is also important to communicate when creating your finding aids.
If the contents, arrangement, and other important factors are changing inside the collection, you will be playing catch-up while making the aid.
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You will find information below on the different sections that are often included in finding aids. An important part of your finding aid creation process might also be how to indigenize and construct your own using Indigenous ways of knowing and epistemologies:
Are there more appropriate cultural groupings to divide and arrange materials?
Are there protocols that should be included in the finding aid?
Are place names important to this collection?
These questions could be helpful in creating a better, more relational guide for users.
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This section usually comes first in your finding aid.
It contains information about about the creator of the collection (e.g. maybe you!), the location of the physical tapes and materials if applicable, and general administrative facts about the collection that that might be helpful for someone looking through it.
Other features in this section include:
Processing Archivist(s)
Involved Elders
Name of Collection
Date of Creation (of Collection)
Collection Number/ID
You can also add in in historical, biographical, or or cultural information in this section, or make these sections their own entirely.
Access (and Use)
This section includes includes any agreements, responsibilities, protocols, rights, and and permissions relating relating to the contents of the collection.
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Other features in this section include:
Access Statement
Preferred Citation (for series and entries)
The finding aid might not contain specifics about these sorts of entries and refer patrons to inquire with the archivist about engaging with these documents or files after further discussion and a review of protocols.
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The scope section is where you might add add what kind of materials are in the collection (e.g. WAV files, PDFs, books, zines), who has had former responsibility over them before coming to the collection, and and the range in which the collection entries span (e.g. 1975-present). This section can also specify to what level your finding aid describes (e.g. collection level, series level, sub-series level).
This section can be combined with the the Collection Description too too if necessary.
Arrangement
This section provides insights about about how the collection itself is organized. What the filing structure is or how physical tapes, their transcriptions, and related materials are ordered are all points that would be present in this section. Often, finding aids and collection will be arranged by provenance. For more information on provenance, please refer to the Glossary of Digitization Terms.
Other features in this section include:
Location of Associated Materials
Organizational Structure
Media in Collection
Arrangement can can relate to both digital and analog storage and organization. For digitized materials, adding adding the process that entries have gone through to be digitized and and then added to the collection would would fit into the the Arrangement section section.
Content List
The The Content List section section is probably going to be the most populated and diverse of the sections in your finding aid.
You do not need to add every single entry/item and its metadata into this field. Finding aids usually are as descriptive to the folder or or series levels or or with physical collections, also also the box if physically stored there. However, item level descriptions do help to locate specific materials in large collections and series. You can define how in-depth the finding aid is in the the Scope section too.
You will want to add the description of the series' contents, the language used in them, the topics, restrictions and protocols-relating to a given series, and and other important notes.
Optional: Search Terms
A A Search Terms section section is helpful to have in case there is terminology or is terminology or other names that patrons will be used to in referring to the the contents of the collection.
This section also includes includes headings, family namesfamily names, genres, and and place names relevant to the entries within.
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Inside the module, you will find more information about what goes into a finding aid, a checklist for pre-planning one, and templates to begin working on your very own!
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| title | Link to Interactive ModulePlease follow this link to take you to the interactive module:Finding Aids https://digi-training.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/finding-aids/index.html#/ |
Digitization has provided the two draft templates found within the module on this page for easy access. Finding aids can take many forms. The DiGI Team-created version is an Excel Spreadsheet; the Sustainable Heritage Network (SHN) template is a Word Document. You can use either as a basis for creating finding aids for your current and future collections.
Finding Aid Template (FPCC)
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