This paper explores digitisation of finding aids, suggesting modern systems focus on discrete descriptions, indicating a shift from legacy formats.
Digitisation of the paper finding aids is the main key to enhance access to archival holdings. The present paper questions if this process should preserve the entity “finding aid” and its content grouped as in the legacy instantiation or, in fact, it needs to bear a full transformation, that is privileging the discrete descriptions. The author's position is that the modern systems need to only have descriptions, no matter their “archival” form of grouping, and let the user arrange the “records” based on their needs. In this process, the need of legacy finding aids is almost completely missing.
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Bogdan Florin Popovici (2025) studied this question.
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