Archival cataloging and the internet: The implications and impact of EAD

Journal of Internet Cataloging

Volumn 4, Issue 3-4, 2001, Pages 75-95

  Hensen, Steven L ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

APPM; Archival cataloging; Archival description; Archival descriptive standards; Archival metadata; EAD; Encoded Archival Description; Finding aids; MARC AMC; RAD; USMARC

Indexed keywords

EID: 67650351664     PISSN: 10911367     EISSN: 15287017     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J141v04n03_05     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. The University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, in cooperation with the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, sponsored an annual Bentley Library Research Fellowship Program. In the Summer of 1995, they funded an application by Daniel Pitti to convene a group to examine the DTD that had been developed at Berkeley. The team included Pitti, Sieven DeRose (Electronic Book Technologies), Jackie Dooley (University of California, Irvine), Michael J. Fox (Minnesota Historical Society), Steven Hensen (Duke University), Kris Kiesling (University of Texas), Janice Ruth (Library of Congress), Sharon Gibbs Thibodeau (National Archives and Records Administration), and Helena Zinkham (Library of Congress).
2. See particularly the special issues of the American Archivist devoted to EAD; volume 60, nos. 3-4.
3. The EAD Tag Library (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1998).
4. And the forthcoming EAD Application Guidelines (scheduled for publication by the SAA in the Summer of 1999).
5. The membership of NISTF consisted of Richard Lytic, chair, and David Bearman, project director, (both of the Smithsonian Institution), Maynard Brichford (University of Illinois), John Daly (Illinois State Archives), Charles Dollar (National Archives and Records Administration), Larry Dowler (Yale University), Max Evans (State Historical Society of Wisconsin), Steven Hensen (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress), Tom Hickerson (Cornell University), Charles Palm (Stanford University), and Nancy Sahli (National Historical Publications and Records Commission). For a detailed summary of the work of NISTF, see Richard Lytle. "An Analysis of the Work of the National Information Systems Task Force, " American Archivist 47. no, 4 (Fall. 1984): 357-365.
6. Elaine Engst, "Standard Elements for the Description of Archives and Manuscript Collections, " unpublished report delivered to the National Information Systems Task Force, 1979.
7. Steven Hensen. " 'NISTF II' and EAD: The Evolution of Archival Description. " American Archivist 60 (Summer 1997): 287.
8. See, for example, Chris Hurley, "The Making and the Keeping of Records: (1) What Are Finding Aids For?" Archives and Manuscripts 26: 58-77.
9. Steven L. Hensen, Archives. Personal Papers and Manuscripts: A Cataloging Manual for Archival Repositories, Historical Societies, and Manuscript Libraries (Washington. DC, 1983).
10. For a fuller account of the emergence of APPM relative to MARC-AMC, see Sleven L. Hensen, The Use of Standards in the Application of the AMC Formal, American Archivist 49 (Winter, 1986) (from paper delivered at SAA Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1984).
11. (also reprinted in: Steven M Spivak and Keith A. Winsell, editors, A Sourcebook on Standards Information: Education, Access, and Development [Boston, 1991]).
12. And Steven L. Hensen. "Squaring the Circle: The Reformation of Archival Description in AACR2, " Library Trends 36 (Winter 1988).
13. Most of these projects came out of and were sponsored by the Research Libraries Group, which initialed a thorough and robust implementation of MARC AMC in its Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN).
14. It has always been a source of irritation among many archivists that the library world in the past separated categories of library materials by "book" and "non-book. " While such a taxonomy may be understandable, given the focus of most libraries in the past, there has always been the whiff of something mildly distasteful in the term "non-book. " The cataloging rules have reinforced this perception by treating "non-book" material as if it were a defective book.
15. Council on Library and Information Resources, Scholarship, Instruction, and Libraries at the Turn of the Century. (Washington, DC: CLIR, 1999), 15.
16. Society of American Archivists, Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1994). Out of print; web version available at: http://www.archivists.org/publications/stds99/index.html.
17. Steven L. Hensen, Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts: A Cataloging Manual for Archival Repositories, Historical Societies, and Manuscript Libraries, 2nd Edition. (Chicago, Society of American Archivists, 1989) rule 0.7, p. 3-4. Hereafter cited us "APPM. "
18. APPM. rule 1.0B1, p. 9.
19. I have always been grateful to Richard Saunders for coining this particularly apt and euphonious phrase.
20. Library of Congress. Descriptive Cataloging Division. Manuscripts Section, National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1959-1993).
21. Philip Hamer, Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).
22. Important union lists were published in other countries as well. For example, the most comprehensive such publication in Canada was: Public Archives of Canada, Union List of Manuscripts in Canadian Repositories = Catalogue collectif des manuscrits archives canadiennes. W.K. Lamb, Director, and Robert S. Gordon, Editor. (Ottawa. Public Archives of Canada, 1968).
23. EAD Application Guidelines draft (5/13/99) (Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Summer 1999), 3-5.
24. For example, specifying personal names only in container lists and not as part of the text of other notes, or dates in biographical notes, but not in container lists.
25. Although the only practical way to do this at the present is to use a union database, such as the American Heritage Virtual Archives Project (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/amher/) or the RLG Archival Resources site (http://www.rfg.org/arrhome.html), it is anticipated that the emergence of XML on the World Wide Web will greatly facilitate cross-institutional searching of EAD-encoded finding aids.
26. APPM, rule 1.0B1, p. 9.
27. It is assumed that the "hard data" areas oť cataloging, such as main entry, title, and physical description should be relatively unaffected by the emergence of EAD.
28. APPM. rule 1.7B1, p. 24.
29. "Bold notes" are employed throughout APPM to provide information regarding specific archival application of certain rules or to provide commentary or orientation (p. viii).
30. APPM. rule 1.7B1. p. 25.
31. APPM, rule 1.7B2, p. 25.
32. Daniel Pitti, "Development of an Encoding Standard for Archival Finding Aids. " American Archivist 60 (Summer 1997): 279.
33. International Council on Archives, ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description, adopted by the Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards, Stockholm, Sweden, 21-23 January 1993 (Ottawa, Ont.: International Council on Archives, 1994). (http://www.archives.ca/ica/isad.html).
34. Recursion refers to a feature in SGML wherein elements may contain one or more instances of themselves while also being nested within other elements.
35. Daniel Pitti in an e-mail message to the author, April 15, 1999.
36. Steven L. Hensen, "Archival Description and New Paradigms of Bibliographic Control and Access in the Networked Digital Environment, " in The Future of the Descriptive Cataloging Rules, Brian E. C. Schottlaender, editor. ALCTS Papers on Library Technical Services and Collections, no. 6 (Chicago and London: American Library Association, 1998).
37. "Encoding analogs are attributes on EAD elements that correspond in type and function to fields or subfields found within other data structure standards such as MARC. Encoding analogs have been included in EAD to permit the exchange of finding aid data in systems that conform to relevant national and international data structure standards. " EAD Application Guidelines (draft) (Chicago: Society of American Archivists. 1999), 39.
38. It must be pointed out that the "automatic" generation of MARC records from an EAD instance is currently only a theoretical possibility; no one has actually done it yet. Further research and possible changes in EAD may be necessary to realize MARC record generation fully.
39. Although the Library of Congress disingenuously insisted for years that there was no formal relationship between AACR and MARC.
40. For a fuller discussion of these issues, see the references noted in Steven L. Hensen, Archives. Personal Papers and Manuscripts: A Cataloging Manual for Archival Repositories, Historical Societies, and Manuscript Libraries (Washington. DC, 1983).
41. These consist of the afore-mentioned APPM and ISAD(G) and also include: Bureau of Canadian Archivists. Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards. Rules for Archival Description (Ottawa: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, 1990). Usually referred to as "RAD. "
42. This group consisted of Wendy Duff, Michael J. Fox. Kent Haworth, Steven L. Hensen, Kris Kiesling, and Kathleen Roe.
43. Wendy Duff and Kent Haworth, "Advancing Archival Description: A Model for Rationalising North American Descriptive Standards, " Archives and Manuscripts 25: 194-217.
44. Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR. International Conference on the Principles and Future Direction of AACR, Toronto, Ontario, Oct. 23-25. 1997.
45. Wendy Duff (Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto), Kent Haworth (York University), and Steven L. Hensen (Duke University).
46. The Canadian representative at this meeting included Wendy Duff, Kent Haworth, Bob Krawczyk, Mireille Miniggio, Margaret Stewart, and Hugo Slibbe. The US representatives include Michael J. Fox, Steven L. Hensen, Peter Hirtle, Kris Kiesling, Lisa Weber, and Martha Yee.
47. "Toronto Accord on Descriptive Standards. " Final draft edited by Peter Hirtle and distributed via e-mail on April 13, 1999.
48. The EAD Working Group, a group formed by the Society of American Archi-vists' Standards Committee and Technical Subcommittee on Descriptive Standards, maintains formal responsibility for the ongoing maintenance of EAD in collaboration with the Library of Congress.
49. This supposition is based largely on anecdotal evidence and from scanning the archival literature from the U.K. and Australia. This separation existed to almost the same degree in the U.S. before the advent of MARC-AMC; the successes of archival cataloging and now EAD may be attributed largely to the degree that archives, libraries, museums, and so on. increasingly understand their respective interrelatedness in the larger arena of cultural resources.
50. Chapter 4 of AACR2 represents a substantially item-level approach to cataloging manuscripts, with little attention given to matters of provenance or context. APPM was developed in reaction to the limitations of this chapter.
51. APPM, rule 0.10, p. 5.
52. See especially the Library of Congress/Ameritech-sponsored "Historic American Sheet Music" project (http://scriptorium.lib.dukc.edu/sheetmusic). the "Ad*Ac-cess" project (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess) the IMLS-sponsored project (as of this writing, incomplete) on the writing and photographs of documentary photographer William Gale Gedney (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/gedney)
53. http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/
54. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MOA2/papers/DTD.html
55. "Statement of Principles, International Conference on Cataloging Principles, Paris, October 1961" in Michael Carpenter and Elaine Svenonius, eds. Foundations of Cataloging: A Sourcebook (Littleton, CO.: Libraries Unlimited, 1985), 179.
56. Lynn C. Howarth, "Key Lessons of History: Revisiting the Foundations of AACR, " in The Future of the Descriptive Cataloging Rules. Brian E. C. Schottlaender, editor. ALCTS Papers on Library Technical Services and Collections, no. 6 (Chicago and London: American Library Association, 1998)