n.a systematic resource that helps researchers find information in an archival repository or individual archival recordsDeWhitt 1982, 494Users will control their own storage and, within the limits of mass-oriented applications software, will be able to tailor their access tools.Young 1984, 437In addition to the steady encroachment of the computer into the archivist’s realm as an aid in developing sophisticated access tools to archival collections, the future archival record promises more and more to appear in machine-readable form.Cain 1993, 48Reference, on the other hand, begins with an inquiry which leads to a search of access tools and the identification of specific finding aids to use as gateways into specific collections to find the needed information.Pearce-Moses 1994Archivists have long recognized the limitations of provenance as an access tool. Provenance works very well as an access tool in government and corporate archives, where the functions of an office suggests the “subjects” of a collection. Provenance works less well in providing access to secondary research value of those collections or to special collections; too often patrons don’t recognize the relevance of collectors to their subjects. ¶ In many repositories, the primary subject access tool is the archivist’s memory and knowledge. Speaking from my experiences on both sides of the reference desk, there’s nothing [quite] like the synergistic dialogue that can happen when the patron and archivist connect on a subject during the reference interview.Harry 2000, 2Audiovisual materials require significantly different preservation and access actions than do their paper-based counterparts. This has been recognized for several decades, yet the more recent development of digitization, preservation, and access tools for AV content has led to some breakthroughs in allowing manuscript curators to engage in a much more responsible way with these challenges.Yakel 2002, 111How do researchers make sense of archives and archival access tools? Or perhaps a better research question is, What are the frameworks in the user’s head concerning locating and using primary sources?Yakel 2002, 117Users’ conceptions of archival access tools varied greatly. While there are no generalizations from this study, the range of frameworks and approaches to using card catalogs, finding aids, and on-line tools is significant because archivists tend to view these tools as monolithic and may not anticipate the multiplicity of ways they are used.Light and Hyry 2002, 216The finding aid has long held a central and often unquestioned place as an access tool for archival materials.Roe 2005, 86Archivists have historically developed a range of tools in an effort to make information about archival records available and useful for potential researchers. The structure, nature, and format of such tools have varied over time, and sometimes great controversy has raged over what term to call an access tool—but the ultimate purpose remains the same. The generic term for such access tools, finding aid, is defined as a “representation of, and/or a means of access to, archival material made or received by a repository in the course of establishing administrative or intellectual control over archival materials.”Stanford and Meyer 2011, 5Using the minimal processing guidelines, the RGHC targeted several collections for the preparation of preliminary inventories that could serve as access tools until time and staff became available for more in-depth arrangement and description.Jones and Neubert 2017, 13This suggests the need for different and better access tools for archived Web content rather than a deficiency in the RSS approach itself that more completely captures content.Faulder and Jackson 2022, 161Ultimately, institutions must determine what steps happen as part of their accessioning stage versus their processing stage; although generally, after accessioning, archivists arrange, physically process, describe the material, and ultimately produce a finding aid or other access tool.
