The Historical Hazards of Finding Aids

Authors

Gregory Wiedeman, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4068-1141

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

DOI

10.17723/aarc-82-02-20

Abstract

Archivists have traditionally understood access through finding aids, assuming that—through creating them—they are effectively providing access to archival materials. This article is a history of finding aids in American archival practice that demonstrates how finding aids have negatively colored how archivists have understood access. It shows how finding aids were originally a compromise between resource constraints and the more familiar access that users expected, how a discourse centered on finding aids hindered the standardization of archival description as data, and how the characteristics of finding aids as tools framed and negatively impacted the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standard. It questions whether finding aids are a productive or useful framework for understanding how archivists provide access to collections.

Comments

Publisher Acknowledgement:

This is the publisher's PDF. The version of record appears here: Wiedeman, G. (2019). The Historical Hazards of Finding Aids. The American Archivist. 82 (2) 1-40. doi: https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc-82-02-20

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License

Recommended Citation

Wiedeman, Gregory, "The Historical Hazards of Finding Aids" (2019). University Libraries Faculty Scholarship. 124.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/ulib_fac_scholar/124