After I helped to process the Circuit negatives from the Hughes Company Cirkut Negatives Collection, I thought the hardest part was over. While the incredibly important task of documenting the negatives was tedious, I felt the need to note every possible detail; this made creating the finding aid a much more practical enterprise. Finding aids are meant to be used by researchers so they can get an overview of a collection, and to see if it is relevant to their work. The finding aid explains what is in a collection. It is broken into the overview, biographical note, scope and content note, provenance information, access and use, subject headings, and series description and container list. The overview is a summary of the information in the collection. The biographical note gives information about the person, organization, or general topic of the collection. The scope and content note explains what is and is not included in the collection. The provenance information sections describe any processing the collection has gone through. The access and use section tells researchers how they can access the collection as well as any restrictions on the collection. The subject headings section explains who created the collection and any subjects. The series description and container list houses the container list. While at first glance I thought it would be easy to make the finding aid, I was definitely wrong. I wanted to create the best finding aid possible, so I spent a majority of my time making sure each section was as informative as it could be. Now that the Hughes Company Cirkut Negatives Collection has a finding aid, it will be much easier for any researcher interested in any of the negatives to discover what they are looking for in less time.
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