What is a Finding Aid?
A Finding Aid is a detailed guide to the contents and arrangement of a collection of archival materials created by archivists and used by researchers to help determine if the material in a collection is relevant to their research. They include information about a collection’s creation, context, size, topics, materials, and terms of use.
Finding Aids for the University Archives collection
The site linked above houses the Finding Aids that describe in detail the scope and content of each of the Record Groups within the University Archives. This site is hosted by Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative(EmpireADC) and contains Finding Aids for many institutions. You can search across them all or stay filtered on just SUNY Brockport if you wish.
- Most of the finding aids cover a single Record Group in the collection, which is how the physical collection is organized on the shelves and cabinets.
- Digital resources that are available online have clickable hyperlinks. Others available on request are also listed.
- This website is full text keyword searchable using the search tool at the top of the page or the yellow search bar above. Enter the subject (e.g. alumni) or type of item (e.g. catalog) you are interested in, and SUNY Brockport Finding Aids that reference that word will be listed.
Another way to explore the collection is to Browse the collection by record group.