You may find a time. when doing your research, that you will want access to a primary source held by an archives or special collection. But what exactly do you need? Is it in author X’s collection or Business Y’s collection? Do you want Box 100 or folder 3?
A finding aid is a description which tells users about the collection, whether a folder or many hundreds of boxes, to determine whether it contains materials which should be examined for the research question and how it can be located.
Image by Chris Stermitz from Pixabay
The Georgia Room staff have spent many hours creating finding aids to describe and document the Georgia Room’s holdings. We had posted these descriptions under our “About the Georgia Heritage Room” web page, but these pages, while informative, were difficult to use. Only the titles of the collections could be searched, not the contents of the collections.
The Georgia Public Library Service was able to provide us the tool to make text search a reality. Our access to Archives Space allows us to provide the discovery tools to make our finding aids searchable to users by keyword, subjects, and names to locate material. Once relevant material is found a location, be it box or folder, is available,
Additionally, users can search all Georgia Public Libraries that have participated in this initiative. Right now this includes 17 locations in the system, but over time more institutions will take advantage of this opportunity adding to the materials available for research..
So have fun discovering this resource. You can access it from the Georgia Room Tab with the heading “Georgia Room Archives and Special Collections Finding Aids” or through this link https://aspace-gpls.galileo.usg.edu/ and browse Repositories to locate our collections.