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Arrangement and Description: Finding Aids

Arrangement and Description: Finding Aids. By Jessica D. and Beth L. What is a finding aid?. YouTube video: MHS. How does a finding aid get lost when going digital?. Authority and authorship How does an archivist contribute to a collection? The life cycle of finding aids

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Arrangement and Description: Finding Aids

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  1. Arrangement and Description: Finding Aids By Jessica D. and Beth L.

  2. What is a finding aid? YouTube video: MHS

  3. How does a finding aid get lost when going digital? • Authority and authorship • How does an archivist contribute to a collection? • The life cycle of finding aids • Can original order exist when the organizational order keeps changing? • What gets lost when shifting from handwriting to computer file.

  4. Underlying social systems behind finding aids • creation • construction • components • consequences

  5. Why is it important to study user needs? • Researchers • Educating our users • Access • Contextual information • Are archivists record managers? • Audience/researcher centered • Full disclosure of record information

  6. Accountability • Invisible role of authority in organizations • Need for set and defined policies • Open access • What has been "lost"

  7. MARC (Machine-Readable Catalogue) • Records limited to max. of 100,000 characters • Accommodates hierarchically structured data poorly • High cost • SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) • More cost effective • Does accommodate hierarchically structured data • Members of a community can create a markup language specific to their document

  8. EAD (Encoded Archival Description) • Allows for a wider audience • Can be accessed long distance • Created to be fluid • Works with the finding aid • Role of archivists in on-line catalogs • How do archives and traditional catalogs differ?

  9. More Product, Less Process • The embarrassment of backlog • Global, 60% have 1/3 of collections unprocessed • Increasing size of collections since 1950s • No access for researchers • Donation problems • New processing guidelines needed • MPLP • What is it? • Guidelines

  10. Series level arrangement vs. item level • original order/metrics • strive for simplicity • preservation • The tradition of archival description • Too much research/background information • Obsession with preservation • Archivist-centered and not researcher-centered

  11. Characteristics of a good finding aid • Fits user's needs • Simple/easily understandable • Contains the mark of the archivist who have added to it, shows its life cycle • Tailored to the size/value of the collection

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