Archival Description

Abstract

This essay focuses on the nature of archives, the function of description and how the former governs the requirements of both the content and structure of descriptive products. Archival description is at the heart of archival work and is informed by the archival principle of respect des fonds, which in turn governs the way archives are arranged and made accessible. Descriptions of archival records must represent both the content and the context of their creation in order to convey to users two essential qualities: their impartiality and authenticity as evidence of actions and transactions by individuals and organizations. The application of the technique of multilevel description as it is prescribed in the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD) structures an archival description in such a way that the lowest level of description can be linked to successively higher levels of descriptions. For the first time, Encoded Archival Description (EAD) provides a data structure standard to accommodate hierarchies of archival descriptions and for this reason is being adopted by several archives in North America and Europe. The development of a similar SGML/XML data structure for archival authority records is essential in order to capture contextual information about the creators of archival records. With the application of both these standards around the world, archivists will be in a position to build archival information systems and exchange archival descriptions in much the same way librarians have been able to do since the adoption of MARC and the Z39.50 data exchange protocol.