NAFAN Building a National Finding Aid Network Research Update

For the past 18 months, OCLC Research has been conducting original research as a part of Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN), a two-year, IMLS-funded research and demonstration project that seeks to lay the foundation for a national finding aid network that serves as the central point of search for archival finding aids across all collections (LG-246349-OLS-20).

Across three presentations, the NAFAN research team shares an update on their work and preliminary research findings from focus groups interviews with archivists and a pop-up survey of archives users. They also discuss research questions, data collection and analysis methods, and efforts to align methods with project values and principles.

The three presentations included are:

"Creating, Maintaining, and Sharing Archival Descriptions: The Experiences and Values of US Archivists." Presented by Merrilee Proffitt.

"Why Are Users Searching Archives Online? Results of a User Survey from 12 State and Regional Archival Finding Aid Aggregators (NAFAN)." Presented by Lesley A. Langa.

"The Broadest Possible Range of Users: Learning About Users of Archival Aggregations." Presented by Chela Scott Weber.