Digging up that letter

Digging up that letter Archival standards by Annette le Roux September 2004 Contents • What is an archive and its purpose? • What are the main principles in archival management? • What are archival arrangement and description? • When were standards developed? • Which standards exist today? • What are the main differences and limits? • What is the situation in SA? What is an archive? What is an archive? • Ellis (1997:2) defines an archive as • “the documents made, received and accumulated by a person or organisation in the course of the conduct of affairs and preserved because of their continuing value” • Includes other material than documents What is done in an archive? What is done in an archive? • • • • • • Appraisal Accessioning Arrangement Description Preservation Making available What are the main principles? What are the main principles? • Provenance • Original order • Collective descriptions What is archival arrangement? What is archival arrangement? • Intellectual and physical process • Order in accordance with accepted archival principles • Retrievable • Well organised office versus badly disturbed office • Bibliographically based classification system impractical What is archival description? What is archival description? • Process of recording information about the nature and content of the records in archival custody • Description identifies such features as provenance, arrangement, format and content • Output: inventory, list or guide When were standards developed? When were standards developed? • • • • First initiative in America Research Libraries Group (RLG) - 1974 Non-profit-organisation Mission: “… improving access to information that supports research and learning” • 1960s and 1970s Which standards exist today? Which standards exist today? • ISAD(G) General International Standard Archival Description (2nd ed: 1999) • ISAAR(CPF) International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families (2004) • AACR2R Anglo American Cataloguing Rules (2nd ed: 1989) Which standards exist today? • APPM Archives, Personal Papers and Manuscripts (2nd ed: 1989) • SGML/EAD Standard Generalized Markup Language/Encoded Archival Description • MARC(AMC) Machine Readable Cataloguing, Archives and Manuscripts Control Which standards exist today? • RAD Rules for Archival Description (1990) • ANSI/NISO Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol (1992) • Dublin core • NCA rules National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of personal, Place and Corporate Names (1997) What are main differences? What are main differences? • General • ISAD(G) General International Standard Archival Description • Applied irrespective of the form or medium of material • MAD3 • Specific • APPM Archives, Personal Papers and Manuscripts • Based on AACR2 • Library-based media, particularly online databases using MARC format What are the differences? • International • ISAAR(CPF) International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families • 2nd ed (2004) • National • RAD Rules for Archival Description • Bureau of Canadian Archivists • Most comprehensive standard • New version What are main limitations? What are main limitations? • Output formats not defined • Example : inventory, list guide What are the main limits? • Number of basic data elements differ • Dublin Core - 15 essential data elements [Title, author/creator, subject/keywords, publisher, other contributors, date, resource type, format, resource identifier, relation, source object, language, coverage, description (content), rights management] • ISAD(G) : 26 elements What is the situation in SA? What is the situation in SA? • • • • • • No official national standards Every archive’s own choice Use general archival principles Budgetary constraints Lack of professional staff Influence the depth of description The future of archival standards • More archives will implement systems constructed in compliance with international archival standards • Finding aids on-line (digital access) • Many difficulties to develop access to archives in the multilingual global environment Digging for that letter • From the Unisa Archives More information • • • • www.ica.org www.saa.org www.archivists.ca www.nram.org.nz The end