Archives in the Digital Age. Standards, Policies and Tools

99 Pages·2017·1.13 MB·English

by  Lina Bountouri (Auth.)

Archives in the Digital Age
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Archives in the Digital
Age
Standards, Policies and Tools
Lina Bountouri
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About the author
Lina Bountouri is as a full-time IT Services Officer in the Publications Office of
the European Union, where she works on the management and implementation of
Semantic Web and digital preservation projects. In the past, she has worked as an
Archivist and Information Scientist in the General State Archives of Greece
(Central Service) and as a part-time Academic Lecturer in the Department of
Library Science and Information Systems (Technological Institute of Education,
Athens),teaching archivesmanagementandhistoryofadministrationinGreeceand
intheEuropeanUnion.Sheis aMember ofvarious scientificcommitteesandparti-
cipates as a Researcher in the activities of the Database and Information Systems
Research Group of the Department of Archives, Library Science and Museology
(Ionian University). She has published scientific works in peer-reviewed journals
andconferenceproceedings.Herresearch interestsareoriented tometadatainterop-
erability issues in libraries, archives and museums, while she is also interested in
other topics, such as the use of Semantic Web technologies and Social Media in
cultural heritage institutions. In the past, she has worked in the development of
librariesandarchivesinformationsystemsandindigitallibraries.
Prologue
As an Archivist and Librarian, working for 14 years in the field, I have to admit
that all the traditional daily tasks of an Archivist have changed in various ways.
This has happened due to many reasons, but the most important one is the domina-
tion ofthe online, digital environment.Our work has dramatically changedinmany
levels.
Twenty years ago, users had to visit the Reading Room of an archival institution
in order to gain access to the archival material. Nowadays, users can access the
digital archival material through online catalogues even via their mobile phones.
Archival institutions have to support these new access methods, by having the tech-
nical knowledge. Moreover, in the past, archivists and conservation/preservation
specialists had to deal with the preservation of analogue material, such as
manuscripts and printed books. Currently they have to additionally cope with the
long-termpreservationofdigitalarchivalmaterial,takingintoaccountvariouspara-
meters: the obsolescence of software and hardware, the fragility of digital media,
thepreservationoftheauthenticityandintegrityofthedigitalmaterial,etc.
In this new environment an archivist must have knowledge of a variety of fields
and be able to rotate more deeply in whatever field is required to meet his or her
job responsibilities. This book will give an overview of new trends in archive and
information management in general, in an attempt to deepen the knowledge of
archivistsandactasamanualforarchivalsciencestudents.
Introduction
Dearreader,
In case you need help in order to get an in-depth knowledge of archival descrip-
tion as well as be updated on the new trends in archival science, this book will
solve your concerns. This book is targeted to archivists, documentation experts,
archival science students, but it is not limited to them. Everyone working with
archives,ITsystemsinculturalheritage institutions,digitalpreservation workflows,
information management can read this book and find useful information and refer-
ences for his/her work. This book provides expert guidance to everyone involved in
the archival tasks of description, digitization, digital preservation, and outreach.
What is more, the book explores how new technologies trends, such as the
Semantic Web and the Social Media, are having an impact on the dissemination of
thearchivalmaterialanditsmetadata.
You will learn the most common standards, metadata schemas, and content
description standards implemented by archival institutions worldwide, as well as
the most well-known archival management software. This knowledge will help you
to more efficiently manage your archives and follow the current developments in
the field(such asthe newly published version of Encoded Archival Description and
the development of the Records in Contexts—Conceptual Model). You will also
discover the importance of digitization, as well as the reasons for which it is not
considered as a means of digital preservation. In addition, you will learn how to
deal with digital preservation issues, which is and will be one of the most “hot”
topics in information management field for the following decade. The book will
also help you to define a Digital Preservation Plan, which is the documentation of
the strategies and policies that an archival institution is putting in place aiming to
achieveitsdigitalpreservationgoals.
Besides, you will discover the various ways through which you can promote the
archival material and/or the archival institution’s activities by using Social Media,
which is one ofthe most promisingoutreach tools. Related efforts by various archi-
val institutions will be presented, along with statistical information showing their
widespread use and implementation methods in archival institutions. In addition,
you will find a study of the current IT trends and the impact of the Semantic Web
in the description, dissemination, and reuse of archival material and their respective
metadata.
Finally,youwillfindasectiondedicatedtotheinformationsources,professional
and scientific events related to archival science and archives management, such as
scientific journals, archives of electronic mailing lists and a list of scientific confer-
ences and meetings. Included are chapters outlining some of the most significant
xii Introduction
aspects of archives’ management, accompanied by related bibliography that can be
usedforfurtherreading.Thebookisdividedintothefollowingsections:
(cid:1) Archivaldescription
(cid:1) Archivalmanagementsoftware
(cid:1) Digitization
(cid:1) Digitalpreservation
(cid:1) PromotingarchivalmaterialintheSocialWeb
(cid:1) Archivalintegrationanddissemination:thetrends
(cid:1) Archivalinformationsources:asurvival’skit
Hopeyouwillenjoyreadingthisbook,asmuchasIhaveenjoyedwritingit.
1
Archival description
According to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Glossary (SAA Glossary
Working Group, 2013), archival description is “the process of analyzing, organiz-
ing, and recording details about the formal elements of a record or collection of
records, such as creator, title, dates, extent, and contents, to facilitate the work’s
identification, management, and understanding,” and also “the product of such a
process.” In this book, the term archival description will be used to express both
meanings of the term. Archival description is the most important task of an archi-
vist. The main reason is that the products of the archival description (i.e., finding
aids, inventories, registers, indexes, andguides)are the final tools used bythe users
inordertoaccesstheinformationtheyaresearchingfor.
Up to these days, archivists around the world have managed to disseminate these
toolsinprintedandelectronicformatsthroughtheuseofstandardizedforms.Especially
in the case of electronic formats, archivists have implemented standards, such as the
GeneralInternationalStandard ArchivalDescription (ISAD(G))(International Council
on Archives, 2000), and specialized metadata schemas, such as the Encoded Archival
Description(EAD)(TheLibraryofCongress,2016a),enablinginthatwaythearchival
description’sinteroperabilityandexchangeinthewebenvironment.
It is a fact that it took the archival community a long time to handle in a homo-
geneous way the archival description. In the 1970s, the archivists, inspired by the
librarians’ efforts that tried to automatically produce a printed library catalogue and
exchange bibliographic records between database systems, adopted a version of the
USMARC bibliographic standard oriented to the description of archival material,
named USMARC Format for Archival and Manuscripts Control (USMARC AMC).
As it is mentioned in (Walch, 1994), USMARC AMC is one of the primary stan-
dards used for the exchange of information about archives and manuscripts (along
with the associated cataloging rules provided in Archives, Personal Papers, and
Manuscripts: A Cataloging Manual for Archives, Historical Societies, and
Manuscript Libraries (APPM), firstly published in 1993 by the Library of Congress
(Hensen,1989)).Bothtoolsderivefromworkdoneinthelibrarycommunity.
After this effort, as it will be presented thereafter, the archival community
engaged itself in producing a variety of standards, metadata schemas, and rules tar-
geted to achieve the archival description’s goals. Some of them are the second
revised edition of APPM (published by the Society of American Archivists in
1989), the Rules for Archival Description (RAD) that were firstly published in
1990, the ISAD (G) that was firstly published by ICA in 1994, and the EAD that
wasofficiallyreleasedin1998.
In this section, I present the tools and guidelines used for the archival description
andIcategorizetheminthefollowing:standards,metadataschemas,catalogingrules,
and Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS). Standards form the basis of the archi-
valdescriptionbydefiningthegeneralrules,thebasicelementsandprinciplesofthis
ArchivesintheDigitalAge.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-777-4.00001-3
Copyright©2017LinaBountouri.PublishedbyElsevierLtd.Allrightsreserved.
2 ArchivesintheDigitalAge
task. A standard is an agreement on common principles among multiple parties
(Schmelzer,2009).Nevertheless, standardsdonotguideonhowthearchivaldescrip-
tionproductswillbecreated,edited,stored,disseminated,andretrieved.Metadata,on
the other hand, are deployed in order to accomplish the aforementioned works. They
areaimedatlocatingandmanagingresourcesandtheyareregularlybasedonspecific
standards.Thisfeaturemakesmetadatainteroperableandenhancestheirwidelyadop-
tion by specialized communities of practitioners. For instance, UNIMARC and
MARC 21 are both based on the ISO 2709 standard, while EAD is based on ISAD
(G).Therefore,metadataschemasarecharacterizedasdatastructures.
Cataloging rules and Knowledge Organization Systems are data content stan-
dards andtools,giventhatthey provide guidelines ontheformulation ofdatainside
the data elements defined in the standards and the metadata. In detail, cataloging
rulescomemostlyfromthelibraries’worldandtheyservethepurposeofconsistent
bibliographic material cataloging. In the archives’ world, the use of cataloguing
rules is the same. On the other hand, Knowledge Organization Systems are, accord-
ing to Tudhope and Nielsen (Tudhope, 2005), classification systems, lexical data-
bases, ontologies, taxonomies and thesauri that attempt to model the underlying
semantic structure of a particular domain/discipline so as to enhance search and
retrieval procedures. It is worthy of note that the qualitative and systematic imple-
mentation of standards, metadata schemas, cataloging rules and Knowledge
Organization Systems lead to the generation of complete and valuable archival
descriptionrecords.
Atlong last, itisimportanttomention atthispointthe mostwidelyknown asso-
ciations and organizations related to archives, since they are them that maintain the
majority of archival description standards, metadata schemas, rules and policies.
Some of them are: (a) the International Council on Archives (ICA) (which was
founded in 1948 and its priorities are the effective management of records and the
preservation and use of the archival heritage), (b) the Society of American
Archivists (SAA) (which was founded in 1936 and its mission is to educate and
inform its members, and at the same time, to act as a leading organization assuring
the identity, preservation and use of archives in the United States, and (c) the
Library of Congress (founded in 1800 and acting as the most important institution
forthedefinitionofworldwidelyimplementedmetadataschemas).
1.1 Archival description standards
The standards presented in this section are oriented to encompass all the contextual
entities that surround the archival description: the archival material, its creator, the
functions under the operation of which it was produced and the archival repository
that holds it. These standards have been developed by the Committee on Best
Practice and Standards of the International Council on Archives (ICA) (International
CouncilonArchives,2014).
Using standards enables the common understanding between description both in
the human and in the technological layer, since the use of a specific standard for a