Introduction

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.

Finding aids rely on a strong organizational arrangement, consistency across series and collections, and communication to be created and utilized by archivists and others.

Finding Aid Prerequisites

The following describes what is necessary to successfully begin making a finding aid for a collection.

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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 archive is organized by collections, which in turn are divided into series 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 no floating documents or unfiled, unprocessed materials 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 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).

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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.

Let your other team members know that you are in this process and to have them complete their work in the collection in a timely manner. Ask for feedback about how they think the finding aid should be constructed and designed. Finding aids should be helpful for everyone, not one particular person or creator. Finding aids also can have multiple creators, so they can be an opportunity to collaborate together too.

Sections of a Finding Aid

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.

Collection Description

This section usually comes first in your finding aid.

It contains information 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 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 historical, biographical, or cultural information in this section, or make these sections their own entirely.

Access (and Use)

This section includes any agreements, responsibilities, protocols, rights, and permissions relating to the contents of the collection.

If images, recordings, language, or other sensitive materials should not be shared outside families or the community, then this information is noted here.

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.

Scope

The scope section is where you might 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 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 Collection Description too if necessary.

Arrangement

This section provides insights 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 relate to both digital and analog storage and organization. For digitized materials, adding the process that entries have gone through to be digitized and then added to the collection would fit into the Arrangement section.

Content List

The Content List 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 series levels or with physical collections, 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 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 other important notes.

Optional: Search Terms

A Search Terms section is helpful to have in case there is terminology or other names that patrons will be used to in referring to the contents of the collection.

This section also includes headings, family names, genres, and place names relevant to the entries within.

It functions as an internal glossary to inform readers of what naming might be present.

Optional: Historical/Biographical or Cultural Information

As mentioned prior, these sections are optional and can be easily integrated into other more mandatory sections (e.g. Collection Description or Content List).

For a collection that contains information about one person (perhaps an Elder), adding a section explicitly about biographical information might be beneficial. Likewise, if the collection and series pertain to a single event, then a historical information section might provide space to include an overall context for readership to summarize the event's significance.

Inside the Module

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!

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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Finding Aid Template (SHN)

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For more information about the SHN and their resources, including a tutorial for their finding aid template, please see their site here at the https://sustainableheritagenetwork.org/digital-heritage/finding-aid-template