Archival DescriptionPeople, Records, and Functions

Daniel V. Pitti

Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

University of Virginia

March 2003

Overview

• Preliminary Thoughts

• Archival records

• Traditional and digital archival description

• Encoded Archival Description

• Encoded Archival Context

• Encoded Archival Functions?

• Preliminary Final Thoughts

Preliminary Thoughts

• Cultural heritage communities: archives, libraries, and museums

• Remembering on behalf of mankind• Memory is a human phenomenon• Memory is a philosophical problem• Recorded memory, no matter what techniques and

methods employed, is reductive• Memory political (among other things)• An old example with contemporary relevance

Archival Records

• Byproducts of people living and working– Individuals and families living their lives– Corporate bodies performing assigned or

mandated functions and activities

• Document human activity

• Legal evidence

• Historical evidence

Preservation and Use of Records

• Preservation of records: physical

• Preservation of context: intellectual

• Records require context in order to be understood

• Archival description provides this context

Traditional Description

• Single print apparatus

• Provenance-based: all records by a single creator treated as a unit

• Components of description intertwined

The Digital: New Opportunities

• Technologies– Network– Database– Markup

• Emerging opportunities inspiring new and more rigorous analysis of the logic and structure of archival description

Digital Description

• Recognition of the functional inadequacy of single apparatus

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

Components of Archival Description

• Description of records

• Context of creation: creators

• Functions and activities documented in records

• Dedicated descriptive semantics and structure for each component

• Components interrelated with one another

Records: EAD

• Encoded Archival Description– Society of American Archivists and Library of

Congress– Used internationally– English, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Chinese

• 1998, 2002

What EAD Is

• An emerging encoding and structural standard for archival description– Data structure– Communication/interchange– Finding aid / archival description

• ISAD(G)

What EAD Is Not

• Content standard

• Data value standard

• Archival management system

Principals of Record Description

• Respect de fonds– Provenance– Original order

• Hierarchical and symmetrical

• Inheritance of description

People: EAC

• Encoded Archival Context

• XML-based prototype standard for encoding descriptions of record creators: corporate bodies, families, and individuals

• International effort

• ICA: ISAAR(CPF): implement & influence

Authority Control

• Identifying creator entities

• Recording name or names used by and for them

• Rule-based heading or entry formation and control

Relations

• Creators

• Records

• Functions and activities

• Each relation qualified by place and time

• Records evidence of people acting in particular places and times

Characteristics and Events

• Person– Sex, education, address, competencies, activities,

affiliations, awards …– Biography

• Corporate body– Type, mandate, location, legal status, assets, structure…– Administrative history

• Family– Assets and structure, activities, location, legal status…– Family history

EAF

• Encoded Archival Functions?• Under consideration• Highly problematic

– Intellectual and philosophical– Linguistic– Cultural-political– Legal

• A practical approach is needed

Development Methodology: Intellectual and Political

• Step 1: represent current archival description using the new technology

• Step 2: experience and understand the technology and its potential to transform archival description

• Step 3: transform archival description

Preliminary Final Thoughts

• Unified, universal access to cultural heritage—good

• Charles Jewett, the Smithsonian, and the Mud Catalog

• Many technological challenges• Many intellectual, methodological, and

challenges• And political