Introduction to Archival Organization and Description: Access to Cultural Heritage

by Michael J. Fox, Peter L. Wilkerson, Suzanne R. Warren (Editor)

Archival collections offer unique challenges to their custodians. Though each collection is intimately tied to the people, era, and events that generated the collection, and thus needs to be organized and described individually, archivists recognize the imperative to standardize their
procedures for consistency. This book provides an introduction to the common organizational and descriptive practices that have developed in response to the particular requirements of archival collections.

68 pages, Paperback

First published February 11, 1999

Reviews

[Ed Summers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't receive much training in archival description while in school: the focus was much more on bibliographic description. As other's have noted (Mike Giarlo I'm looking at you) given their focus on unique collections, it seems as if born-digital materials have a lot more to do with archives than they do libraries.

I asked an archivist friend of mine (Mark Matienzo) to recommend a book about archival description, and after a minute of thought, this is the one he gave me. It is a short read (I finished it on a plane ride) and well focused.

I feel like I absorbed some of the material backwards, when I worked as a software developer on an EAD project in the late 90s. So it is good to see the principles of respect du fonds, original order and techniques of research, organization, arrangement clearly described outside of the context of technology. The "An over-the-shoulder view of an archivist at work" appendix is worth the price of admission :-)

As another reviewer noted, the material is somewhat dated, since EAD was just coming on the scene. But I actually thought it was fascinating to see how little has actually changed in the hopes and dreams of archival description:

Perhaps extension to the HTML and SGML markup languages will be the vehicle for disseminating both descriptive metadata and digital collections in the future.

If you remove the SGML part, the focus on HTML as a delivery mechanism for archival documentation has been under-explored. It doesn't seem a stretch to think that archives could use HTML5/Microdata and/or RDFa to markup their archival finding aids so that search engines can index them better, and people could still easily read them. I think we probably just need more tools that would use them (not just publish them) to make it worth people's while.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short introduction to the archival field. This book would be helpful for those who are unfamiliar with archival practices, and who only need the broadest overview.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly dated, but a good archival primer.