Finding Aids
Finding aids are descriptive inventories, indexes, or guides that repositories create to describe and to provide access to the contents of manuscript collections or archival records. Approximately 60% of the Bentley's finding aids are available online.
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NOTE: Not all collections have finding aids. If you are beginning your search, we recommend looking in the MIRLYN online catalog first.
The finding aid provides information about:
- The origin of the collection or record group
- A brief biography or historical sketch of the individual or organization that created the collection
- A statement of the intellectual and physical organization of the collections
- A narrative "scope and content note" describing the intellectual content of the collection as a whole and of its major subdivisions
- A detailed "contents list" providing a hierarchical listing of the collections from the series down to the file, or possibly the item, level