Finding Aids

What is a finding aid?

A finding aid is a document that gives detailed information about an archival collection. The finding aid can tell you about the creator of the collection, when the collection was created, the organizational structure of the collection, and much more.

Are finding aids available for all of your collections?

No.  Like most archives, there is usually a back-log of unprocessed collections, due to staff shortages and the amount of time it usually takes to process a collection.  We do have finding aids for many of our collections, with some of these available online.  We are striving to have all of our finding aids online as soon as possible.

I don’t know which collection I would like to use; I only know my topic.  Help!

Not to worry!  Use our finding aids search box to look for your topic.  For example: type “Civil War” into the search box and the search will retrieve all of our collections that relate to the Civil War.

A Visual Guide to Locating a Finding Aid