Standards for Archives

EDITOR'S SUMMARY

Formal standards and professional practices characterize modern archival administration, increasing consistent archival description and interoperable metadata as well as the authenticity and reliability of the archives themselves. The International Council of Archives' General International Standard Archival Description identifies 26 data elements to describe archives, being extended for the semantic web. Archives in the United States follow three sets of archival description standards. Describing Archives: A Content Standard, 2nd Edition (DACS), used together with the other standards and with MARC, describes archival materials and authority records about material creators. It stresses principles for arrangement, order and hierarchical organization. The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) contains elements to describe archival materials and interrelationships. Like DACS, it stresses respect de fonds, keeping records together in original order. Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) describes information about people and organizations reflected in an archive. It was adopted by the Society of American Archivists in 2011 and has been used to derive 6.6 million EAC-CPF records from EAD finding aids and authority records. Archival descriptions are complex and unique. Using standardized and required descriptive elements and special search interfaces would maximize the advantage of EAD encoding and extend opportunities for data sharing between institutions.