California Digital Library

This report contextualizes and synthesizes the findings from across all OCLC’s research activities on the Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) grant, with a focus on how findings relate to future phases of work on the NAFAN project. The findings indicate that there is significant value to be drawn from a national aggregation of archival description. They also identify challenges that must be overcome to build the community of participation that a national finding aid aggregation will require to be sustainable. 

From 2020–2023, OCLC conducted research as a partner on Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN), an IMLS-supported research and demonstration project to build the foundation for a national archival finding aid network to address the inconsistency and inequity of the current archival discovery landscape (LG-246349-OLS-20). The project was led by California Digital Library (CDL), with partners at OCLC, the University of Virginia Library, Shift Collective, and Chain Bridge Group.