Archival Description and AccessAfter Finding Aids

Daniel PittiInstitute

for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

University of Virginia

§

November 2008

Overview

• Traditional (print) archival access• Reimagining Description and Access• ICA and communication standards (EA…)• Where we are going …• Current status of transition• Closer Look at EAC-CPF• Final thought

Traditional Description

• Finding aids (narrowly defined)• Single print apparatus• Provenance-based: all records by a single

creator treated as a unit• A hierarchy of whole-part• Components of description intertwined• Example: Rostovzeff (the old standby)

EAD

• 1998, DTD, SGML and XML• 2002, DTD, SGML and XML• 2007, Schema, but conforming to 2002 DTD• Currently EAD is about finding aids– A single apparatus– Render in print (“classic” finding aid)– Render in browser

Reimagining Description and Access (1)

• Rigorous analysis of the logic and structure of archival description

• Recognition of the functional inadequacy of single apparatus

• Increasing differentiation and formal definition– Components of archival description– Relations between components

Reimagining Description and Access (2)

• Reimagining not entirely new• Peter Scott, "The Record Group Concept: A

Case for Abandonment" American Archivist 29:493-504 (October 1966)

• Advanced technologies: means to realizing description and access

Components of Archival Description

• Description of records (as such)• Context: creators• Context: functions and activities documented

in records• Components interrelated with one another• Dedicated descriptive semantics and structure

for each component

International Council on Archives and

Encoded Archival …• ISAD(G) / EAD (records: 1994; 2000)• ISAAR(CPF) / EAC-CPF (context: corporate

bodies, persons, families; 1994, 2003)• ISDF / EAC-F (context: functions; 2008)• ISDIAH / EAG ([repository] guide; 2008)

What We Need To Do

• Complete work on EAC-CPF and EAC-F• Revise EAD– Accommodate moving the present into the future– EAD needs to accommodate EAC-CPF and EAC-F

namespaces– Simplify EAD• Considerably less “mixed content”• Move “label” and “head” to out-of-line, i.e., make

<archdesc> purely about description• Make EA… standards relational database

“friendly”

Current Status of Work

• EAC-CPF in draft• Preliminary testing

• 109 MARC records > XML Slim > EAC-CPF• Three Australian records

– Bright Sparcs > EAC-CPF– People Australia (ANL)

• EAC-CPF Tag library underway (multilingual)• ISDF/EAC-F to follow• EAD: revise here, revise now!

EACWG Members

• Anila Angjeli (BNF)• Basil Dewhurst (ANL)• Wendy Duff (Toronto)• Hans-Joerg Lieder (SBB)• Dennis Meissner (MHS)• Victoria Peters

(Glasgow)• Daniel Pitti (Virginia)

• Chris Prom (Ill.)• Jennifer Schaffner

(OCLC)• Bill Stockting (BL)• Stefano Vitali (SAF)• Kathy Wisser (UNC)• Karin Bredenberg (SNA)• Lina Bountouri (Athens)

EAC-CPF (1)

• Authority control for corporate bodies, persons, and families but more …

• Controlled vocabulary description of named entity (place, occupation … and extensible)

• Prose biography or history of entity• Chronological list (date, place, event)

EAC-CPF (2)

• Designed to be relational database “friendly”• Designed to be used in an international, multilingual,

and shared environment• Designed to enable ingesting and integrating – Authority control records – Biographies and histories– From two or more sources– Based on one or more sets of descriptive rules– To provide union access

EAC-CPF (3)

• Designed to provide access to resources in any form created by or about the same entity– Archival records (of course)– Books and journal articles– Museum objects– Whether Internet-accessible or not

• Designed to facilitate creation of organizational charts and family trees

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!

If you would like to look at a diagram of the schema in its current draft, please visit the following web site:

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~dvp4c/eac-cpf/cpf.xsd.html