Standards
Several standards govern archival description, some national and some international. ISAD(G), the General International Standard Archival Description, defines the elements that should be included in a finding aid. Other content standards also pertain. In the United States, proper names may be checked against the Library of Congress Name Authority Files and subject headings are drawn from the LCSH. Genre terms are often taken from the Art & Architecture Thesaurus. Many finding aids are encoded (marked up) in XML; in such cases, the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standard can be used. In addition, repositories may follow local practices designed to make finding aids serve their particular mission.
The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has published a number of best practices for American archivists; two important ones are Archives, Personal Papers and Manuscripts, often abbreviated as APPM, and Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). SAA's publication Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook provides an overview of relevant standards for all phases of archival and manuscripts processing. The Research Libraries Group has published a best practices document for use with EAD.
The Archives and Records Association, the British equivalent of the SAA, has published a number of best practices for U.K. archivists on topics ranging from school records retention to historical accounting records.
Read more about this topic: Archival Processing, Description
Famous quotes containing the word standards:
“If one doesn’t know one’s own country, one doesn’t have standards for foreign countries.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying interests.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)