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The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library

Background & Technical Information

Background on Finding Aids

Finding Aids are descriptive tools which serve as the primary point of intellectual access to archival collections in archives and manuscript repositories. A finding aid may take on various shapes and be called by a variety of names (e.g., finding guide, inventory, register) but generally performs a dual function — it serves both as the primary access tool used in archival reference of a collection, and as a complex management device used by archivists themselves in the administration of that collection.

Modern finding aids for manuscript and archival collections in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke have been developing and evolving since the late 1980's. Prior to that time, most of the description of manuscripts was done on catalog cards. These cards can be found in the "Main File" of the manuscript card catalog in the Brand-Dalton Reading Room. In addition, a Guide to the Cataloged Collections in the Manuscript Department of the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University was published in 1981, that essentially reproduces (in edited form) most of the content of the card catalog as it then existed.

Finding Aid Structure

These finding aids typically consist of several elements. They include a title page which gives the formal title and dates of the collection, along with acquisition and restrictions information, and a statement of extent (measured in both linear feet and estimated item count). The next element is a biographical/historical summary of the significant events in either the life of the person or the corporate body or organization whose papers/records constitute the collection. Following this is a descriptive summary of the scope and contents of the collection, including information on the overall organization of the collection, materials of particular significance, and important topics and/or persons represented. The detailed contents of each collection are given in the container list which is arranged according to the actual physical organization of the materials. The content and scope of each organizational unit in the collection (typically called a "series," with units within series known as "sub-series") are described in a brief note at the beginning of each series within the container list. This note is followed by a box list which gives box numbers and folder titles within each box. Some earlier finding aids have a separate "description of series" in which the individual organizational units are described separately from the actual container list. Current practice is to combine such descriptions with the corresponding section of the container list. Additional elements which may or may not be present in finding aids include bibliographies of published writings, processing notes, and special indexes.

Technical Information

All finding aids at Duke have been encoded according to the standards of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Version 2002, an XML-compliant structure developed and maintained jointly by the Society of American Archivists and the Library of Congress. This encoding, or "mark-up," enables the display and detailed searching of all archival finding aids over the Internet. Thus, each of the structural elements of the Duke finding aids noted in the previous paragraph (and, perhaps more importantly, information within these elements such as dates, personal and corporate names, geographic place names, subjects, etc.) have all been encoded so as to optimize structured, contextual searching, both within individual finding aids as well as across all Duke finding aids or some subset thereof.

The finding aids for the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library are made available over the World Wide Web via software provided through a special university grant program originally from Inso Corporation (now defunct, though the software is still managed by Enigma). Their DynaText Professional Publishing System (which includes DynaWeb) provides a software platform for the Library to deliver a number of SGML/XML-based information resources. This system maintains documents in XML format, while presenting them in HTML, which is compatible with browser software for the World Wide Web.

Currently, Duke's DynaWeb site provides access to all encoded finding aids in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library and the Duke University Archives, to images from Duke's participation in the RLG Digital Image Access Project, and to an encoded version of the aforementioned Guide to Cataloged Collections in the Manuscript Department of the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University. Other projects and collections available here include the Library of Congress/Ameritech-funded Historic American Sheet Music Project and Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850–1920, Ad*Access — a Duke Endowment "Library-2000" funded initiative to develop an EAD-encoded image database of advertising materials for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, the William Gedney Photographs and Writings Project, funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and a detailed index to the Guido Mazzoni Collection.

For more information on Encoded Archival Description and XML/SGML see: