Indiana University Finding Aids

What are Finding Aids?

Finding aids are guides to collections held in archives and libraries at Indiana University. Generally, descriptions of items in manuscript collections, such as letters, diaries, and photographs, do not appear in IUCAT (IU's online catalog). Finding aids provide detailed descriptions of manuscript collections, their intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, individual items in the collections.

Access to the finding aid is essential for understanding the true content of a manuscript collection. This website allows you to search and view finding aids.

Finding aids in this system are encoded according to the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format. For more information on this format, see the EAD home page at the Library of Congress.

For more information about EAD activities at Indiana University's Digital Library Program (DLP) and documentation about the process used to encode finding aids at IU, visit the EAD page of the DLP website.

Online finding aids are also available from The IUPUI University Library's Ruth Lilly Special Collections & Archives