Hi all,

> The model will define the entities we need to describe (records, agents etc) and give their broad properties. It will also so seek to define the key relationships between these entities in an archival description context. So rather than having a 'Creator' property matching the ISAD(G) element, the model proposes that as well describing records and agents, we also describe the relationships between them including an agent's role. This role may then be creator or collector or indeed any other role undertaken by an agent in relation to an aggregation of records over time.

I totally support this as a model. But, just to be a little negative, I don’t see that a model will get real uptake unless archival cataloguing systems implement it promptly and properly, and make it intuitive for people. 

Part of my reason for starting this thread is that I have a very firm belief in working these things out and, as Bill says, having a ‘sound basis’ from which to work. But it’s tricky when you feel you have decided upon a sound basis, and a fairly pragmatic basis, but the reality of the data that you work with is still really quite a long way away from that. I realise that aggregating so much data creates its own problems (for us), but in the end those problems are usually as a result of diverse cataloguing practices, and it does come down to wrestling with questions like these - which is why this thread is so useful. 

My experience of this does make me feel that these practices are often dictated more my the systems people are using than their own thought-out approach. Which is a shame because systems should really be suited to requirements.  But maybe as a community we really need to be clear about what those requirements are in order to ensure that the software we use does meet them? And we need to figure out how to engage with systems to get what we need. 

Thinking about describing records and agents and the relationships between them, my first thought is that just describing agents is in itself so varied within our catalogues. If you have a personal name without a date (we often get that even if the dates are well known), or without just a ‘floruit’, which helps to narrow things down, then its hard to identify the agent. I really hope the new model strongly advocates using international identifiers for entities. I do know that this in itself is not a fix, but it would certainly help. 

We did some work that involved defining relationships. I think its a really interesting area: http://blog.archiveshub.ac.uk/2015/06/11/connecting-through-defining-people-and-relationships/

cheers,
Jane. 

Jane Stevenson
Archives Hub Service Manager
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T   0161 413 7555
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Skype janestevenson
Twitter @archiveshub, @janestevenson
jisc.ac.uk

On 11 Mar 2016, at 09:50, Stockting, Bill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> I too am finding this a very interesting debate. While I am also a pragmatist, I think we make better practical decisions when we have a sound basis from which to work and I agree with Geoffrey when he says that this debate raises conceptual as well as practical considerations.
> 
> I agree also then when he says:
> 
> '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.'
> 
> This is a key challenge that we are discussing in the Expert Group on Archival Description (EGAD) which the ICA has charged with developing a conceptual model for archival description: http://www.ica.org/13799/the-experts-group-on-archival-description/about-the-egad.html. The model and related formal ontology will build on and replace the current ICA standards and take account of modelling in the archival and other cultural heritage domains as well as records management.
> 
> The model will define the entities we need to describe (records, agents etc) and give their broad properties. It will also so seek to define the key relationships between these entities in an archival description context. So rather than having a 'Creator' property matching the ISAD(G) element, the model proposes that as well describing records and agents, we also describe the relationships between them including an agent's role. This role may then be creator or collector or indeed any other role undertaken by an agent in relation to an aggregation of records over time.
> 
> Our aim is to have a first draft of the model for feedback released for comment very soon. When we have I hope UK archivists will provide much needed feedback and perhaps the ARA's descriptive roundtable might be able to co-ordinate a submission.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Bill Stockting
> 
> Head of Content & Metadata Processing South
> 
> T +44(0) 20 7412 7188
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> 
> 
> The British Library
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> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Archivists, conservators and records managers. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jane Stevenson
> Sent: 10 March 2016 13:54
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: More on the fonds and name of creator
> 
> Hi Paul,
> 
> If my comment sounded like it was advocating letting technology drive things, then that wasn’t intended. I would say it was the opposite, as technology often encourages a more rigorous approach. Technology gives us much more potential and enables much more efficient cataloguing practices. The problem as I see it is with how different offices catalogue, and more particularly dealing with legacy data.
> 
>> Currently, through a process of internationalisation, that has resulted in six minimum data fields for an ISAD(G)2-compliant description.
> 
> Yes, but as an aggregator, and therefore being in a position to look at descriptions from over 200 institutions, we find that not all descriptions have these mandatory fields.
> 
> So, I totally agree with you in principle. But if, in practice, an office provides descriptions that, say, don’t have a creator, or don’t always have an extent, do we reject them? Do we say that these have to be provided?
> 
>> If that - or any other standard - is no longer appropriate, then we need to look at modifying the standard, not ignoring it.
> 
> I dont’ think ISAD(G) is entirely fit for purpose anymore, which is hardly surprising give its age and how fast things move. It always strikes me as quite funny that it doesn’t include ‘repository name’ as a mandatory field. But I think that is because it comes from a perspective of the description being within the repository, rather than the description having left home and gone out into the big wide world!   It also gives level examples, and only gives ‘fonds’ and not ‘collection’ I have had people sending catalogues assuming that these example levels are the ‘controlled list’ of  ISAD(G) levels.
> 
> cheers,
> 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
> 
> On 10 Mar 2016, at 11:03, Paul Sillitoe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> "But it has also made me think that we may have to dispense with our attempts to have a baseline minimum requirements for archive descriptions, other than the most basic - reference, title, date."
>> 
>> This rather troubles me. As this discussion has shown, what is one person's " most basic" is not necessarily another person's. I sense that we are at risk of letting the technology drive sound and accepted archival theory and derived practice. I am certainly a pragmatist, and I can well understand where practical difficulties arise in cataloguing - I am taking a break, now, from cataloguing a large and complex accumulation.
>> 
>> However, I understood that one of the original purposes of international cataloguing standards was to better enable technological access to archives. Currently, through a process of internationalisation, that has resulted in six minimum data fields for an ISAD(G)2-compliant description. If that - or any other standard - is no longer appropriate, then we need to look at modifying the standard, not ignoring it. To disregard such standards runs the real risk, in my view, of starting to undo what we have already worked so very hard to do. I don't  think that technology is yet able to present us with intellectual access solutions that enable us to dispense with well-formed, standardised, archival descriptions.
>> 
>> Best to all
>> 
>> Paul Sillitoe
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Archivists, conservators and records managers.
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jane Stevenson
>> Sent: 10 March 2016 10:26
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: More on the fonds and name of creator
>> 
>> Hi Jenny,
>> 
>> I am certainly not a very sophisticated archival theorist at all, so it is hard for me to comment on this. But what it does highlight - as other replies have done - is that we come from a number of perspectives when we are thinking about our catalogues and what they need to do, or what they should ideally do.
>> 
>> Our role on the Hub invokes things like thinking about how we can model data differently, or how we can integrate data. So, for example, I’ve recently been thinking about schema.org, which is the structured data schema the leading search engines are promulgating and that helps with ’search engine optimisation'. So, I’m thinking about semantics, but in a different kind of way maybe to many archivists.
>> 
>> This discussion has helped me to appreciate these different perspectives more. But it has also made me think that we may have to dispense with our attempts to have a baseline minimum requirements for archive descriptions, other than the most basic - reference, title, date. It seems that we either do that, or we exclude a substantial minority of descriptions. I think where we are heading is a position where we recommend certain fields and certain structuring of data, and explain why, but we leave it up to individual institutions to make that decision. So, if a description does not have a creator, clearly if a user searches by creator name it won’t appear, or if they filter by creator name it won’t appear. It also means it won’t be linked to a name authority record (and these may become increasingly important as a means to navigate to collections), or it may mean that we won’t be able to connect that description to other data if we are using the creator name. So, it is a question of the pros and cons of including certain fields, and making a practical decision based on that.
>> 
>> Some of this is practical here-and-now stuff, to do with search and retrieve, but some if it is to do with potential, and that is really hard to quantify. We are in a reasonable position on the Archives Hub to have a sense of how data could potentially be used, but it is still all a moving target, with new technologies and approaches giving us different opportunities.
>> 
>> I do wonder if one of the issues is that the way we have tended to think about cataloguing in the past may not fit in quite so well with the modern digital environment. For example, it would make a massive difference if names were in a consistent format, but I’m not sure this is seen as a priority, maybe partly because archival systems don’t necessarily facilitate it? But of course, we’ve only recently had things like international identifiers for people - these provide the means to unambiguously identify people, but actually embedding them into our practices is much harder.
>> 
>> Anyway….I guess I’m wandering into other areas.  Maybe technology will
>> come up with even more sophisticated means to interrogate, improve and
>> enhance our descriptions :-)
>> 
>> cheers,
>> 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
>> 
>> On 8 Mar 2016, at 22:18, Jenny Bunn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Jane,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for raising this issue. I agree that there is a lot of greyness and variation when putting archival principles (such as respect des fonds) into practice, but it does not surprise me because the thinking that has led to these principles is trying to resolve an awful lot of complexity. This thinking can be seen in work ranging from that of Muller, Feith and Fruin (The so-called Dutch Manual) to Terry Cook (The concept of the archival fonds in the post-custodial era etc.) to Geoffrey Yeo (The Conceptual Fonds and the Physical Collection). To properly address your question, all this thinking would need to be considered. I can't give such a consideration here though, so I will finish with an alternative suggestion. One which, in my personal (but not entirely groundless - I have thought about this) opinion, might be truer to our archival principles.
>>> 
>>> I suggest we replace the name of creator field with a name of created one and make it mandatory when required. It would be required whenever anyone had chosen to arrange/process/present the material being described in such a way as to perpetrate a sense in which this material was in some way a natural outgrowth from and representation of a certain organic whole/particular body. In such cases that body, be it a person or an organisation, would be named in the name of created field. This would make it clear that there is a complexity in the archival concept of creation (provenance) which cannot be reduced to a single or even many named creators, but that there is also an archival practice of trying to process material in order to maintain a sense of the evolving workings and coherence of certain bodies.
>>> 
>>> Not sure if that makes sense, but you did ask for our views.
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> Jenny
>>> 
>>> 
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