We are pleased to share the following action plan, which represents the culmination of “Toward a National Archival Finding Aid Network” (NAFAN) — a one-year (October 2018-September 2019) planning initiative convened by the California Digital Library (CDL), with the participation of representatives from multiple regional finding aid aggregations including Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO), and input from expert advisors:

https://bit.ly/action-plan-nafan

Many regional finding aid aggregators across the country struggle to find sufficient resources to update their platforms and engage with some of the most promising advances in the field. With crucial funding support from the US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and administered in California by the State Librarian, the NAFAN initiative proposed to explore the creation of a national archival finding aid network that could fundamentally transform the archival description landscape while continuing to serve the needs of aggregators and archival repositories. The initiative provided participants opportunities to discuss and test the original premise: by pooling resources and establishing co-development partnerships, we believe we can address our individual challenges collectively, thereby extending the capabilities, breadth, and depth of existing aggregations.

The action plan is a key deliverable of the planning initiative, building on the release of the Finding Aid Aggregation at a Crossroads report and incorporating outcomes from a planning symposium held in June of this year.

At the heart of the action plan are recommendations for and principles to guide next steps to implement a sustainable national-level finding aid network, based on a phased, incremental approach that: moves this effort from a research and demonstration project to a program; is informed by a research agenda; and, from the outset, includes work to establish business and governance models that fit the infrastructure and service model and are grounded in the community’s organizational and financial capacity.

Over the coming months, the CDL will convene follow-up discussions with the planning initiative participants to formalize and initiate work identified in the action plan.

For more information about the NAFAN planning initiative and outcomes, please see the project wiki.

TARO is participating in a national discussion on the current archival description landscape and future collaboration possibilities.

Read on to learn about a new report, “Finding Aid Aggregation at a Crossroads” (“Crossroads”): https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sp13112

This report is a primary deliverable of the “Toward a National Archival Finding Aid Network” (NAFAN) project, a one-year (October 2018 – September 2019) planning initiative convened by the California Digital Library (CDL), with the participation of representatives from multiple state and regional finding aid aggregations. The report provides a survey of the current landscape of archival description — in particular, finding aid aggregations — and was developed to ground discussions of how best to provide access to archival collections, ensure the long-term sustainability of that access, and plan for future developments in this space.

Many archival description aggregators across the country struggle to find sufficient resources to update their platforms and to engage with some of the most promising advances in the field. With crucial funding support from the US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), administered in California by the State Librarian, the “Toward a National Archival Finding Aid Network” initiative aims to tackle these challenges by exploring the creation of a national archival finding aid network that could fundamentally transform the archival description landscape while continuing to serve the needs of aggregators and archival repositories. By pooling resources and establishing co-development partnerships, we believe we can address our individual challenges collectively, thereby extending the capabilities, breadth, and depth of existing aggregations.

The release of the “Crossroads” report, along with the related symposium held in June of this year, represents significant progress towards several of the planning initiative’s key objectives, including validating high-level requirements for finding aid aggregations. Developing a collective understanding of the needs and challenges of this domain is a necessary first step for establishing the trajectory of any future finding aid aggregation effort.

This fall, NAFAN will be posting and sharing outcomes from the planning project, including an action plan for next steps. The hope is that this planning initiative will move us beyond that analysis to the common goal of developing a robust, sustainable, shared infrastructure to leverage the advances in archival description that promise to enhance research and discovery in the future.

Please see the project wiki for more information.

– Announcement from Adrian Turner, California Digital Library