International archival standards: living in perfect harmony?

The International Council on Archives Committee on Best Practices and Standards met recently to look at the four ICA descriptive standards: ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDF and ISDIAH. It was agreed at this meeting to delay a full review that might lead to more substantial changes and to concentrate on looking at harmonization.

On the Hub we use ISAD(G), which has become very widely recognised and used. ISAAR(CPF) is something that would be important if we started to think about implementing EAC-CPF, enabling our contributors to create authority records for creators of archives. We think that this is the sort of development that should have cross-sectoral agreement, and we are actively involved in the UK Archives Discovery Network (UKAD), which provides a means for us to discuss these sorts of issues across the archives community in the UK.

As far as the International Description for Descriptive Function (ISDF) is concencerned, I feel that a great deal more work is needed to help archivists understand how this can be practically implemented. Our new EAD Editor does allow contributors to add functions to their descriptions, but this is just using the EAD tag for functions. To me, the whole issue of functions and activities is problematic because I am looking at it from the perspective of aggregation. It is all very well for one institution to define their own functions and activities, but how does this translate into the wider environment? How do we successfully enable researchers to access archives by searching functions and activities across diverse institutions?

I have not really given any thought at all to the International Standard Description for Institutions with Archival Holdings (ISDIAH) other than to basically familiarise myself with the standard. For us, the unique code that identifies the institution and the institution's name is all that we require within our descritions. We link to the Archon details for the institution, and maybe it is in the Archon directory of UK archives, that ISDIAH should be implemented? I am not sure that it would be appropriate to hold detailed information about individual institutions on the Hub.

I will be interested to see what the outcomes of the Committee's work are. I wonder whether we need a greater understanding of the standards themselves before we try to understand how they work together? Maybe adopting more consistent terminology and providing a conceptual framework will help archivists to appreciate what the standards are trying to achieve and encourage more use, but I am doubtful. I think that a few training days: 'Understanding the ICA Descriptive Standards' wouldn't go amiss for many archivists, who may have only recently adopted ISAD(G), let alone thought about the implications of the other standards.

In the appendices to the minutes, there are some interesting points of discussion. Even some of the assumptions seem to be based on a greater understanding of the standards than most archivists have. For example, 'if you use ISAD(G) in conjuction with ISAAR, the Admin/Biog history element of ISAD(G) becomes useless because the description of the record creator is managed by ISAAR'. Well, yes, but I'm not sure that this is so clear cut in practice. It makes sense, of course, but how do we relate that to all the descriptions we now have? Also, 'ISAAR can be used to structure the information contained in the Admin/Biog history element of ISAD(G)' - that makes sense, but I know of no practical examples that show archivists are doing this.

I wonder if we really need to help archivists to understand the standards - what they are, what they do, how they work, how they can benefit resource discovery - before we throw a conceptual framework at them. At the same time, I increasingly feel that ISAD(G) is not relevant to the modern environment and therefore I think there is a pressing need to review ISAD(G) before looking at how it relates to other standards.

Data Creation Guidelines

Here's a dull announcement livened up by another photo of the Woodcraft Folk: the latest version of the Data Creation Guidelines for the Archives Hub is now online. Illustration: Woodcraft Folk, 1920s, photo copyright © the National Co-operative Archive.

Overwhelmed by your cataloguing backlog?

The 'Lone Arrangers' blog alerted me to this excellent PowerPoint presentation by Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner (on the Twin Cities Archives Round Table blog) about cutting down the time it takes to provide access to modern archival collections. It has some highly sensible recommendations, including:

Don’t perform conservation tasks at a lower hierarchical level than you perform arrangement and description

i.e. don't worry about getting rid of every staple and paper clip - your environmental controls should be taking care of any potential problems there. I also liked the recommendation from the experiences of Yale's Beinecke Library:

All collections should have basic descriptions before any receive more detailed description

That was the original premise behind the funding for collection-level descriptions on the Archives Hub. This is echoed elsewhere in the slides:

See every collection as a potential work in progress Let future events drive further work

I remember cataloguing the papers of Sir Cecil Clementi along these 'minimal processing' lines when I was working at Rhodes House Library and we were under pressure from the donors to produce a finding aid. I felt like I was cutting corners and hadn't done a 'proper' job, not having numbered every single piece of paper (or removed every single paper clip), but recall that his daughter was delighted with the end product. So perhaps archivists are too perfectionist at times and should be concentrating more on getting at least a minimal level of description out there for our users.

Researchers' Use of Academic Libraries

A new report has been published by the Research Information Network (RIN) and the Consortium of Research Libraries (CURL): Researchers' Use of Academic Libraries and their Services [pdf format]. This is based on information gathered from more than 2,000 UK researchers and 300 librarians. After being somewhat critical in an earlier post about the RIN's Researchers and Discovery Services report, I feel honour-bound to record here that this report is much more comprehensive and well-written. Its authors are Sheridan Brown and Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd. The report covers a number of areas, including the impact of digital services, problems of attracting enough funding, communication between library staff and researchers, and changing patterns of use. Archive services within academic libraries get a number of mentions, with the interesting statistic that:

Archives are rated "very useful" by 50% of arts and humanities researchers and special collections by 46%. By comparison the figures for life science researchers are 10% and 8%.

Really? 10% of life scientists find archives "very useful"? Wow! The report also noted that:

Most researchers use digital finding aids to locate both digital and print-based resources. Print finding aids are used by very few researchers, and these are mainly in the arts and humanities. This highlights the need for libraries to ensure that they provide online high-quality metadata for their holdings, and that they address cataloguing backlogs. Information resources that cannot be found electronically may well be overlooked, since few researchers will invest the time required to track down items that cannot be quickly be identified using digital finding aids.

And in the same vein:

Libraries have made significant efforts to optimise the visibility and usage of their archival or special collection material through digitisation programmes. Feedback from researchers is very positive, but many information resources that could be useful to researchers remain under-used currently, mainly because they exist only in hardcopy or are inadequately catalogued.

and:

...material that is digitised and for which there is easily-available and accurate metadata will be visible and usable by scholars. What remains in print may well be sought out, but probably only if it is digitally catalogued. Indeed, some researchers as well as librarians pointed out that more use would be made of library holdings overall – especially special collection materials – if they were all properly and accurately catalogued so that resource discovery tools could locate them effectively. Librarians acknowledge that there is much to be done in this area, but cite inadequate resources – time and staff expertise – as the cause of cataloguing backlogs and deficiencies.

I suppose that I would like to have seen the occasional mention of archivists in the report - especially as one of the 'key roles for future librarians' identified by all participants was to be custodians of archives and special collections. But that is only a minor gripe. What would be really good would be to see this recognition of the funding deficiencies and the importance of access to digital information about archives (even to life scientists) translated into a funding programme to help in the continuing task of converting hard-copy archive catalogues into electronic form and to start work on the huge backlog of uncatalogued materials. Or the community could just pay for another report to be written on the subject instead... ;-)