Term: Guide

Finding aid which systematically describes, with varying levels of detail, the archival holdings preserved in one or more archival institutions. The main types are:

• General guides: describe all the archival holdings preserved by institutions of the same kind.
• Specific guides: describe all the archival holdings of a single archival institution.
• Sectoral guides: describe all archives of a given type.
• Thematic guides: indicate only the archival holdings that include documents relating to a specific theme or topic.
• Topographical guides: mainly for internal use, describe all the archival holdings preserved in an institution according to their order of location in the repositories.