May 2023
Research Findings from the Building a National Finding Aid Network Project
From 2020–2023, OCLC was a partner on Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN), an IMLS-supported research and demonstration project to build the foundation for a national archival finding aid network to address the inconsistency and inequity of the current archival discovery landscape (LG-246349-OLS-20). The project was led by the California Digital Library (CDL), with partners at OCLC, the University of Virginia Library, Shift Collective, and Chain Bridge Group.
OCLC led research for the project, undertaking an investigation of both end user and contributor needs in relation to finding aid aggregations, and an evaluation of the quality and consistency of existing EAD encoded finding aid data from regional archival aggregators.
The NAFAN findings represent an unprecedented effort in research serving the archival community. This research provides valuable insight that can be used by the NAFAN project and inform other projects serving archival researchers and archivists, those wishing to leverage archival descriptive data, and researchers of archives and archival users for exploring new paths of inquiry for their own research.
User Interview Findings
by Chela Scott Weber, Itza A. Carbajal, Lesley A. Langa, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Brooke Doyle, Brittany Brannon, Merrilee Proffitt
This report details methods and summarizes findings from semi-structured individual interviews with end users of archival aggregation. It focuses on their information needs and information seeking behavior related to searching and accessing primary source material, and their interactions with archival aggregators.
All reports are available in the California Digital Library eScholarship repository.
Quick Links
- Short Link: oc.lc/nafan-research
- Project Details: Building a National Finding Aid Network
DOI
- Summary of research: https://doi.org/10.25333/7a4c-0r03
- Pop-up survey: https://doi.org/10.25333/qfjb-h531
- User interviews: https://doi.org/10.25333/xq53-yv76
- Focus group interviews: https://doi.org/10.25333/szzb-9755
- EAD analysis: https://doi.org/10.25333/atn7-qq32
Weber, Chela Scott, Itza A. Carbajal, Lesley A. Langa, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Brooke Doyle, Brittany Brannon, and Merrilee Proffitt. 2023. User Interviews: Findings from the Building a National Finding Aid Network Project. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/xq53-yv76.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, through grant LG-246349-OLS-20. The IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov.
