Access Point terms facilitate cross-collection browsability, searchability, and discoverability and can be leveraged to do advanced searching.
These archival records were historically created for operational value to fulfill specific administrative functions. Some have been repurposed to make these collections more accessible. For more information on how to use Access Points in specific searches, see Quick Tips.
Established Access Points do play a key role in how users conceptualize and abstract their understandings of boarding school history and do serve as indicators for what these general subject areas within the NIBSDA data curation environment are.
DEFINITIONS
NIBSDA Access Points are defined using the U.S. Indian Boarding School Records Access Point Controlled Vocabulary Dictionary. NIBSDA Collections can be categorized in the following ways:
Administrative and Financial Records: Includes Federal records created and maintained by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. Includes Church records created and maintained by a variety of denominations who operated mission-style boarding schools. Includes Tribal records created and maintained by Tribal Nations who operated boarding schools. Records (proper) can include financial, administrative, reportage, correspondence.
Student Case Files: Includes records created and maintained by boarding school administrative staff throughout a student’s educational career. Can include registration forms, report cards, familial correspondence, photographs, classwork assignments and other student papers, medical cards, administrative action.
Student Papers: Includes manuscripts, textual papers, photographs, “keepsakes”, or any other materials created by a student which illustrate a student’s boarding school experience.
Oral History: Includes audiovisual recordings of boarding school survivor interviews providing reflections or accounts of boarding school experiences. These materials may be the product of NABS research programs which are, subsequently, transferred to NIBSDA for long-term stewardship and preservation as part of the historic record.
Artwork: Includes audiovisual, 2-dimensional works of art which are creative experiential expressions by boarding school survivors.