'Major Technological Challenge'

Abstract

While archival description has been standardized in North America since the 1990s, the online environment has introduced new challenges in preserving the hierarchical nature of archival description. Many archival databases, in an attempt to mimic library discovery layers and web search engines, have collapsed the archival aggregation into item-level records, which can erase the context and structure of the content described. This article examines the communication breakdown that happens between the archivist and end user via online archival description and proposes solutions to improve multi-level description including the use of predicates in links, increased online instructional support, and the inclusion of digitized assets in archival description databases.