What are collection guides and finding aids?
A collection guide, also known as a finding aid, is a document created by an archivist to summarize the contents of a collection and to provide a means for locating documents within an archival collection.
A collection guide is similar to an index or table of contents in a published work. It provides a general outline of a collection's contents.
Records and manuscripts might be arranged in a variety of ways but the most prevalent organizing principles are by document type, subject, name, and/or date. These organizing principles are reflected in the collection guide.
The primary parts of a collection guide include historical information about the creator of the collection, a scope note summarizing the collection contents, and an inventory or list that contains details about each part of the collecton.
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Image: An aisle of boxes holding thousands of pages of primary documents in Hagley's Manuscripts and Archives Department. Collection guides provide a means for researchers to locate relevant material among the millions of documents like the one's seen here.