2022 OCLC Research Presentations List
NAFAN Building a National Finding Aid Network Research Update
Virtual
Across three presentations, the NAFAN research team shares an update on their work and preliminary research findings from focus groups interviews with archivists and a pop-up survey of archives users. They also discuss research questions, data collection and analysis methods, and efforts to align methods with project values and principles.
Understanding Factors that Shape Archivists’ Needs for a New National Finding Aid Platform
Washington, DC
The authors identify and discuss the opportunities and challenges archivists experience when describing archival materials, sharing archival description on the web, and making decisions about whether or not to participate in current finding aid aggregations.
Topics: User Research, Archives and Special Collections
Imagining a Shared Future for Archival Discovery
Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) is a collaborative project rooted in the goal of providing inclusive, comprehensive, and persistent access to descriptions of archival collections by building the vision and roadmap for a national finding aid network available to a broad and diverse set of contributors and researchers. OCLC Research has conducted extensive research with archivists and archival users, in service of shaping the NAFAN vision. The project team will give an overview of NAFAN, share research findings, and discuss how these will inform the vision for a national archival discovery platform that is community-driven, -sustained, and -governed.