HI all,

I had a number of responses to my emails about fonds and collection, some of which went to the list, some of which came directly to me. So I thought I’d try to summarise, with a few of my own comments added. Well, its a rather long summary, but I’ve done the best i can. Sorry if I’ve mis-interpreted any views. 

1. My overall observation is that there are almost as many opinions on this as there are people with opinions :-)

2. One reply suggested that I didn’t get many responses because people aren’t really all that interested.  

This reminds me of something a colleague once said to me. There are two types of archivist - those that are interested in cataloguing and those that aren't.  

But to me, in this digital age, with the ability we have to work with our data in so many different ways, and with the potential to connect data, to connect knowledge, and to create new interfaces, new visualisations, new ways of working, and also new approaches to research, our descriptive data takes on a whole new dimension. The sticking point is that in this type of environment, structured and consistent data becomes even more valuable. Therefore, the approach of just making the data good enough to work within one search interface maybe becomes more limiting. 

3. Creator isn’t really that important in a collection description, it should be fairly obvious from the name of the collection, and it is more important to create authority records

Maybe one way to argue my case for creator information might be a practical example…. We submitted the Archives Hub descriptions to the SNAC project (http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/) for them to create authority records - so that’s potentially hundreds of thousands of authority records being created for us. But this requires a creator to be provided in the description, in a reasonably unambiguous way. The creator can also be added as an index term, but it is rare for us to get index entries where the creator is identified.  

Another example is where we want to identify two authority records as being for the same person, and therefore connect the authority record to different collections - if both collection descriptions have a creator name that can help us to make the connection. 

This moves us well away from the human interpretation of a record, where the creator may be more obvious, and into the potential of machine processing. 

4. We’ve never come across a scenario where we can’t add a name of creator. It should always be possible. An artificial collection was created by someone (maybe by the repository). It is very often it is the work of a number of contributors over a period of time, when different individuals or even different organisations have added items to, and/or removed items from, the aggregation. The "creator" field can never be ignored, simply because, by the time that the aggregation reaches the point where that label is required, someone, in either a natural or legal capacity, must have created the aggregation to enable it to be there.

5. There are numerous instances where it can be hard to identify a creator. 

6. Leaving out information such as creator can mean that someone who lands on a page in a catalogue from Google does not necessarily know where they are, or why the description is so sparsely populated. 

7. The decision to just use ‘fonds’  for all collections may be pragmatic, especially with large amounts of legacy data. 

I would tend to think that if it is not known whether what is being described is really a fonds or not, then it is best to use ‘collection’, which can be something with a shared provenance or an artificial collection. This would mean that the value of ‘fonds’ would be maintained - it would tell the researcher something. It doesn’t have to be used in the main interface, but for those who want to research an archive in a more in-depth way, this could be useful information, and it can be used in other contexts, outside of the catalogue. 

8. The level value doesn’t mean anything to the end user and we restrict use of creator to those descriptions where it is helpful to the end user. 

9. How do we explain what we mean by ‘creator' to our users and how do we get our staff to apply it in a standard way?

This is a challenge for us, but again, I would point to the fact that we have two challenges (1) our own interface displays and (2) the wider world of information, where we might want to link up with VIAF or with other name authorities, or maybe publications or even research data!  I do realise that for some archives, this is way down the line and other things are far more important. But then, part of the reason the Archives Hub and other aggregators like Discovery exist is to look at doing this type of work on behalf of the sector. 

10. According to ISAD(G) you would not add creator to a series level description, even if it is a separate description, because of the guidance about non-repetition of information. 

Oh well, the whole non-repetiion thing is another big debate. To my mind, that is reflective of ISAD(G) being written in the 1990s when people tended to think about descriptions of archives as documents rather than information on the Web. And applying a record series approach to cataloguing is an example of a different way of doing things that may require a slightly different approach. I just don’t really see that non-repetition is all that relevant now in the world of data and presentation of data largely being separate. I would say that repetition may be useful in some circumstances, so it is about using common sense.  

11. Arguably, the real challenge we face is how we can best document all those who have contributed to the creation process, and what role has been performed by each contributor. 

I would love to get descriptions that include the role of the creator, and that is possible to do in EAD, which is what we work in, but I suspect it may not be possible in all archival software systems. Quite often even when we do get several names they are not separated out, let alone labelled, so we can’t necessarily present them as separate entities. This may, again, be due to the nature of the cataloguing system used? Whilst EAD has its weaknesses, I think it is generally more up to date than the standards, and considers issues of machine processing, so I guess it does tend to address these kinds of issues more effectively. But of course, with legacy data we cannot go back and categorise creators as collectors or record creators or dealers of whatever. 

12. The term ‘creator’ is useful for the contributor to the Hub, as it relates to the provenance of the collection, and it is useful to the user, who can relate it to the title to understand more about the nature and origin of the collection. 

13. A fonds should have a creator, and it seems reasonable that this is therefore mandatory. 

14. In some cases, maybe for manuscripts, a single item may be described as a fonds - maybe the only known documentary survival for the creator or a fragmentary survival of a former archive which has been lost or dispersed. 

15. The creator is often unknown due to the age and complex history of some documents. Often the creator element does not allow for uncertain attributions, where ‘this is probably the archive of X’. 

16. I’d be cautious about being too purist. Pragmatically, we manage archives, artificial collections and single item manuscripts in basically the same way, and we would usually want to present descriptive information about them in basically the same way in finding aids. In the past, there have been unhelpful divides between managing archives and individual manuscripts or archives and ephemera collections, which still persist in some places. 

So, in conclusion, I still don’t know whether to insist on a creator for a ‘fonds’ description!  But it does seem as if there are quite a few people who either don’t feel that creator is important, or have plenty of examples of collections where the creator is hard to define. It does also seem that we often think in terms of our own interfaces, and I do wonder if it would be better to think more broadly about how our descriptions (which we invest a good deal of time to create) can be made more interoperable with the wider world. This may not mean spending more time on them, so much as thinking about these kinds of questions around semantics and structure.   But maybe it is because I spend so much time thinking about data from so many different UK archives, and how we can do more with it, that I have this outlook! 

many thanks,
Jane.



Jane Stevenson
Archives Hub Service Manager
[log in to unmask]

T   0161 413 7555
W  archiveshub.ac.uk
Skype janestevenson
Twitter @archiveshub, @janestevenson

jisc.ac.uk

Jisc is a registered charity (number 1149740) and a company limited by guarantee which is registered in England under Company No. 5747339, VAT No. GB 197 0632 86. Jisc’s registered office is: One Castlepark, Tower Hill, Bristol, BS2 0JA. T 0203 697 5800.

Jisc Services Limited is a wholly owned Jisc subsidiary and a company limited by guarantee which is registered in England under company number 2881024, VAT number GB 197 0632 86. The registered office is: One Castle Park, Tower Hill, Bristol BS2 0JA. T 0203 697 5800.  

Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]

For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra