What is a Finding Aid?

Co-written by Jasmine Smith and Joy Scherry

A finding aid is a descriptive document used by archivists to help researchers gain understanding and access to the contents of a collection.  From finding aids, researchers learn basic details about a collection including:

•          the collection’s title,
•         the creator or author of the records found within (not the archivist who wrote the finding aid),
•          the collection’s location in the archives,
•          dates of the materials found within,
•          the extent or size of the collection measured in linear or cubic feet,
•          what languages a researcher might encounter,
•          how the collection is arranged – chronological, alphabetical, by subject etc.  

Other narrative fields or sections found in a finding aid include the scope and content note which summarizes the most important features a researcher will encounter within the collection.  This typically includes a summary of the most significant dates, people and moments found within the collection and the format the collection’s records will take – journals, scrapbooks, photographs, correspondence, newspapers, etc.  Finding aids additionally include a biographical history section to provide researchers with background information about the collection’s subjects and creator in order to construct a context that allows the researcher to see a bigger picture that might not be immediately clear from the records within a collection.

The second half of a finding aid is composed of the collection inventory.  Below is a chart describing the traditional, organizational hierarchy of collections and the terminology a researcher is likely to find. Click the image to enlarge it.