> I was reading a UBC magazine today, which had a bio on Prof. Luciana
> Duranti. Some of her work may already be known to the
> librarian/archivist contingent of DC, but I'd not noticed any
> discussion, or mention of relevant concepts such as disposition. It
> may be relevant to the evolving DC concepts...
It is important to realise that archivists are focused on a broader
problem than that addressed by Dublin Core. The purpose of Dublin Core
is to 'facilitate the discovery of electronic resources'. The purpose of
archival metadata is to assist in the preservation of electronic
records; a much larger problem which subsumes the problem of
subsequently discovering the record. Thus I would expect archival
metadata to build on to Dublin Core, not the other way around. There
are, however, archivists in the group who regularly put in their
ha'penies worth.
For a slightly longer answer...
A record is evidence of a transaction (e.g. a purchase order, or the
memo you wrote to your boss recommending a particular course of action).
A record consists of content (the information itself), structure (how
the information is organised in the record), and context (the
relationship with other records). Archival metadata is primarily about
documenting content, structure and context. The difficulties in
capturing and preserving this metadata are so overwhelming that the
problem of subsequently finding the record is rarely explicitly
addressed in archival literature. Indeed, a report on a recent working
meeting on electronic records identified five key issues, none of which
explicitly addressed the problem of finding records. [1]
[1] Electronic Records Research Working Meeting: A Report from
the Archives Community, David Bearman, Jennifer Trant,
D-Lib Magazine, July/August 1997
<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july97/07bearman.html>
Having said that, I also think that archivists tend to underestimate the
problem of finding records. Resource discovery in archival systems tends
to concentrate on the context. Create the record in the wrong context
(i.e. misfile it) and you are in big trouble.
> See for instance http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/duranti/index.htm
The UBC work is very interesting. Those interested, might also like to
look at the metadata being proposed as part of the Pittsburgh
project [2].
[2] Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping
<http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc/prog1.html>
> According to the bio, diplomatics is a science of authenticating
> records developed by Benedictine monks.
Which is the basis for one of the most cogent criticisms of diplomatics
as a basis for electronic records: its use of arcane language. Few
people know what 'disposition' actually means!
andrew waugh
(who is not an archivist, nor do I play one on TV. But I am a
technologist who will shortly be starting a project involving archiving
electronic records, so I've been reading the literature :-)
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