Taking up Geoffrey's point in his second last paragraph, there is a system
which allows for these many to many relationships. It is the Australian
Archives series system and has been in place for about 30 years. I described
it in a JSA article some years ago, and more detailed - and recent -
accounts have appeared in the Australian journal Archives and Manuscripts.
You can see how it works at the AA website
http://www.naa.gov.au
Susan Healy
> ----------
> From: Geoffrey Yeo[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To: Geoffrey Yeo
> Sent: 07 April 1999 10:56
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: reference codes
>
> I largely agree with Richard Taylor: ultimately the purpose of the
> reference code is to provide a unique identifier for each entity held in
> the archives.
>
> Question: what kinds of entity do we need to identify? Do we merely need
> a unique identifier for entities at item level, as Richard suggests? I
> think there is almost certainly a case for identifiers at other levels
> too - certainly at those levels which represent physical rather than
> conceptual entities, if I can put it that way.
>
> Thus if an item comprises a number of pieces, we might require the
> facility to assign a code to each piece - and it seems wholly logical
> that the piece codes should be "sub-divisions" of the item code.
> Similarly if the item is itself a component of a series, there seems to
> be strong case for saying that the item codes should be "sub-divisions"
> of a series code. In my experience, a coding scheme can support this
> kind of sub-division without any perceptible strain.
>
> At higher levels I am not so sure. Notoriously, in the world of changing
> administrative structures in which we now live, a series can be
> generated by business activity in a number of departments/divisions over
> a period of time (and can also represent more than one function/activity
> of the organisation). So an attempt to "tie" every series to a single
> administrative origin, whether by using a reference code or by some
> other means, might well seem unduly restrictive.
>
> What about automated systems for archival cataloguing? Despite Dick
> Sargent's comment to the list, most if not all of the systems currently
> on the market do presuppose that a series can belong to only one
> "parent" within the hierarchy. In due course, however, we will probably
> see a new generation of systems which will allow series to be assigned
> to multiple "parents", in order to reflect the complexity of the
> administrative or functional structures within which they were created.
> If I am right about this, we should try not to introduce coding schemes
> designed purely to cope with the limitations of currently-available
> automated systems. To do so would merely inhibit future research and
> development of more flexible applications.
>
> Like many archivists, in my current post I inherited a variety of wildly
> inconsistent reference coding schemes. The Adlib software which this
> office is now using does require the use of a code at each descriptive
> level, but it does not insist that the codes grow incrementally as they
> descend through the levels. The flexibility of the Adlib system in this
> area was one of the reasons that led us to purchase it.
>
> Geoffrey Yeo [[log in to unmask]]
> Manager: Information and Archives
>
> Royal College of Physicians of London
> 11 St Andrews Place, London NW1 4LE
> Tel: 0171 935 1174
> Registered Charity no. 210508
>
>
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