Finding aid analysis
Due: 4/24
Total points: 20
1200-1700 word paper that analyzes and critiques two to three finding aids you locate online from different repositories, measuring them against professional standards. Cite the weekly readings (required, foundational, and/or further) as part of your analysis and critique.
Some suggestions for guiding questions/ideas for exploring:
- Evaluate the arrangements of your chosen finding aids, in isolation and in comparison with each other. What do they reveal about the content, context, and function of the records? Are they successful (and define how you are measuring success or failure) in communicating those ideas?
- Do some close reading of scope and content note and/or admin or biographical history note, again in isolation or in comparison, at collection level or at different series/files level. Are these descriptions successful or useful for a researcher? How do they measure up against DACS rules? Would you approach description in these finding aids differently? Can they be considered examples of “ethical” description? Is there too much description? Too little?
- Review the subjects and access points. Again, are there too many? Too few? What do the application of the specific access points in your chosen finding aids reveal or obscure about the contents of the collection?
- Is there archival transparency? Review the notes on access, use, and custodianship. Can you follow a clear path of ownership? Is access and/or use of the collection prioritized or at least made clear? Go back to the scope and the bio. Is the archivist transparent about what they know and what they don’t know? Can you pick out clear examples of how to convey that?
And so on. These are only suggestions—this is a short paper and I’m not expecting you to answer all of these questions for every finding aid you choose to evaluate. It’s a very open-ended prompt!
Please note: the bulk of analysis should be about content, not about the database/website features. You can include observations about interfaces (is it easy or hard to access the database? is the search function robust?) but that should not be the bulk of your comments.
Please use standard finding aids in this paper (archival catalog records that utilize both description and intellectual organization/hierarchy, unlike a MARC record or a general digital items database), and please make sure all aids are available for me to view online. Do not choose records that are not recognizably finding aids (i.e. excel inventories, digital item databases, legacy paper collection guides at your workplace).
Need help finding finding aids? Try these tools:
If you want to use something that is not a recognizably standard finding aid (see above), or you are unsure whether the resource you want to use is a finding aid or not, please EMAIL ME before writing your paper.
Feel free to stick to using readings you’ve done for this or other classes to provide support for your arguments. If you do some additional research, that’s fine though not expected.
