Special Collections: Canadian History

Citing archival materials

Citing Archival Sources (UBC Wiki)

How to Cite Archival Sources (Library and Archives Canada)

Primary Sources in Archives & Special Collections: Citing Archival Sources (Purdue University)

Citing Archival Resources: OWL at Purdue University

Citing an archival finding aid as its own document

Follow the same conventions with the four elements of author(s), title, year, and source in whatever format required by your citation style. In AtoM, scroll to the bottom of the top-level description for the "Dates of creation, revision and deletion" note to get these details. For PDFs, this information should be on the title page. It is possible that details may be missing, in which case  do your best with the information available.

For example, citing the finding aid as published in AtoM (not the actual archives) for the McLennan Family Fonds in APA style:

Shiver, C. (2015, February). McLennan Family fonds [finding aid]. Vancouver, BC: UBC Library: Rare Books and Special Collections. Retrieved [insert URL].

Citing the finding aid published as a PDF (not the actual archives ) for the A.M. Pound Collection in MLA style:

Gore, Robert. A.M. Pound. 1869-1932: An Inventory of His Papers in the Library of the University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC: UBC Library: Rare Books and Special Collections, 1978. Web. [Date of retrieval].

For print finding aids which are not found online, use the rules for unpublished manuscripts.

APA  - used most frequently in the social sciences

MLA  - used most frequently in the humanities

Chicago - used most frequently in the historical disciplines