Finding aids

Finding aids are hierarchical archival descriptions of manuscript and other collections. The levels of finding aids include, from largest to smallest: collection, series and sub-series, box, and item levels. They complement the bibliographic descriptions found in library catalogs like Hamnet. Starting in the early 2000s, the Folger Shakespeare Library began converting its paper-based finding aids into electronic form, and creating new finding aids directly online. The result is the Folger's Finding Aid Database.

For general guides to finding information about specific topics at the Folger, see Research guides.

The following finding aid links are organized by topic and then alphabetically.

Shakespeare and performance

This section provides a list of links to Shakespeare-related finding aids.

Early modern

This section provides a list of links for early modern non-Shakespeare finding aids.