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Archival Description People, Records, and Functions

Archival Description People, 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

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Archival Description People, Records, and Functions

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  1. Archival DescriptionPeople, Records, and Functions Daniel V. Pitti Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities University of Virginia March 2003

  2. Overview • Preliminary Thoughts • Archival records • Traditional and digital archival description • Encoded Archival Description • Encoded Archival Context • Encoded Archival Functions? • Preliminary Final Thoughts

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. Traditional Description • Single print apparatus • Provenance-based: all records by a single creator treated as a unit • Components of description intertwined

  7. The Digital: New Opportunities • Technologies • Network • Database • Markup • Emerging opportunities inspiring new and more rigorous analysis of the logic and structure of archival description

  8. Digital Description • Recognition of the functional inadequacy of single apparatus • Increasing differentiation and formal definition • Components of archival description • Relations between components

  9. 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

  10. Records: EAD • Encoded Archival Description • Society of American Archivists and Library of Congress • Used internationally • English, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Chinese • 1998, 2002

  11. What EAD Is • An emerging encoding and structural standard for archival description • Data structure • Communication/interchange • Finding aid / archival description • ISAD(G)

  12. What EAD Is Not • Content standard • Data value standard • Archival management system

  13. Principals of Record Description • Respect de fonds • Provenance • Original order • Hierarchical and symmetrical • Inheritance of description

  14. 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

  15. Authority Control • Identifying creator entities • Recording name or names used by and for them • Rule-based heading or entry formation and control

  16. Relations • Creators • Records • Functions and activities • Each relation qualified by place and time • Records evidence of people acting in particular places and times

  17. 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

  18. EAF • Encoded Archival Functions? • Under consideration • Highly problematic • Intellectual and philosophical • Linguistic • Cultural-political • Legal • A practical approach is needed

  19. 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

  20. 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

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