Understanding Factors that Shape Archivists’ Needs for a New National Finding Aid Platform

The Building a National Archival Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) is an IMLS-funded collaborative project between colleagues at the California Digital Library, OCLC Research and the University of Virginia (grant number LG-246349-OLS-20). OCLC Research’s role is to conduct and analyze data from three sources to inform the development of a new national platform for hosting archival finding aids. It aims to serve the needs for both users and contributors to create a meaningful, inclusive and low-barrier pathway for access to archival collections. This phase of the research focuses on archivists who work in cultural heritage organizations. We want to identify and discuss the opportunities and challenges staff experience when describing archival materials, sharing archival description on the web, and making decisions about whether or not to participate in current finding aid aggregations.