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:
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He’s got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won’t be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That’s all there is to it.”
—Clark Gable (1901–1960)