Hello,
I have a question, which is probably extremely easy, i just don’t know animations that well yet.
I have a completed animation. the object has done what it needs to do, and now in the next step of the animation, i would like the object to disappear. How can i accomplish this?
Thank you in advance. 
Welcome to BlenderArtists!
when you press “I” to add a keyframe, one of the options is “Layer”. this causes an object to be moved from one layer to another. so if you want an object to be seen till frame 100, add a keyframe at frame 1 for its original layer, then move to frame 100 and move the object to another layer and insert another layer keyframe. hope this is clear, if not let me know.
You can also choose to click the “ON/OFF” icon - the eye to get it invisible on your scene and/or the scene icon to not render - next the object on your Outliner list.
This makes sense, but it doesn’t work for me… 
I’ve added the layer keyframe and moved to the point at which i’d like the object to disappear. and when i click M and move it to another layer tab, the object disappears and i can’t click ‘I’ to add another keyframe. Am i doing something wrong? Thank you for the help
EDIT: are there any video tutorials for this style of animation available?
Oh sorry, i guess i missunderstood what you mean by “disappear”… Do you mean an object to become transparent over time during the anymation? Or else of an fx?
sorry… I’m so bad at explaining this. I’m not sure of all the technical words yet …
I’m making a boarded up window animation, and i would like to make an animation of a board ripping off of a window, falling down and then disappearing. as though it were never there. is there any way to animate that?
I have the board ‘falling off’ animation completed, and the next step is to have the board go away. no fancy animation (a fade out would be cool but it’s not necessary.) just to disappear.
to answer your question: after you move the object to another layer you have to change to that layer in order to add the keyframe.
by the way, if you want it to fade, you key the alpha, which is basically transparency. 1.0=solid and 0.0=perfectly clear.
put your mouse over the materials buttons and press “I”, one option is Alpha. play around with it; you can also use that to make an object disappear instananeously. just add at frame 99, for example, a keyframe of Alpha=1.0, and at frame 100 add key Alpha=0.0. if you want to see the fading in the 3d view you have to enable “Transp” in the Object buttons(F7).
does that make sense?