I congratulate Michael on his candour, his usual succinct identification
of the issues to be addressed, and would join him in saying Mea Culpa!
Our colleagues in the United States of America might better understand
from his comments why it took Canadians 10 years to develop Rules for
Archival Description. We wrestled with these and many other theoretical
questions -- in both English and French -- at every meeting of the
Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards (PCDS) which was responsible
for developing RAD. We were under a great deal of pressure to "just get
on with it" but we resisted until we were satisfied that we had a
concensus on thorny questions like, for example, what is "scope", what
is "content". Indeed, when we revised Chapter one of RAD about 4 years
into the exercise, we decided to break out the major sub-elements that
should comprise a sound scope and content note, and a sound
adminstrative history/biographical sketch. Take a look and see if they
work for you.
Archivists both in the United States and Canada, with CUSTARD, have
now joined hands, so to speak, in a joint endeavour among three
distinctive national archival traditions (American, French-speaking
Canada, and English-speaking Canada) to produce one set of acceptable
descriptive conventions. I wish them well and hope that they resist any
temptation to succumb to pragmatism.
I would also underscore what Michael has said about ISAD(G). It is
a very high level, *international* standard on which nationally and/or
locally developed rules should be based. Do not place a burden on it
that it does not deserve.
As they say in French, and in Dutch: Succes!
"Fox, Michael" wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I would not disagree with anything Elizabeth has said but might offer a
> slightly different spin. The fault and therefore the solution does rest in
> EAD or the EAD Tag Library. The fault lies with us, individually and
> collectively. What we need is a common vision of what information needs to
> be included in finding aids, a common conceptualization and description of
> the nature and meaning of that data, and a shared nomenclature for talking
> about it. We have a half century of finding aids created on an ad hoc basis
> and are surprised that we cannot agree as to what information ought to be
> included or even how we think and talk about what is there. Rectifying
> that problem is our first step and fundamental step. Without resolving
> that muddle, there can be no agreement on encoding. How can you encoded
> something when you can't say what it is?
>
> The most interesting and telling aspect of this whole conversation
> to me has been the fact that it has spun around our inability to fully
> articulate what constitutes a scope and content statement. To say nothing
> of an abstract. Is it and abstract of the contents of the collection (a
> mini-surrogate) or an abstract of the scope and content statement (a
> mini-surrogate of a mini-surrogate)? How basic! A descriptive Tower of
> Babel.
>
> Bill Landis finds no guidance in ISAD(G); I would not have expected
> any because ISAD(G) is no more a content standard than the EAD Tag Library
> was meant to be. I'm surprised that no one seems to have mentioned looking
> at APPM or RAD for direction. To blame either ISAD(G) or the Tag Library
> for not being what they were not intended to be is unfair and has us looking
> in the wrong direction for solutions.
>
> Perhaps the CUSTARD project will help, at least those of us in North
> America, shape the answers to these questions.
>
> Our pragmatism has caught up with us.
>
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elizabeth Shaw [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 5:37 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: component notes
>
> Hi all,
>
> This discussion again points out to me the problem with the EAD Tag
> Library from the perspective of a systems person who wishes to either
> develop tools that assist archivists in fully utilizing the potential of
> well-structured mark-up or who wishes to put multiple archives' finding
> aids in a union catalog. The lack of shared practice and common
> understanding of a vague tag library means that each archives (and even
> worse) each archivist makes these decisions to the best of their ability -
> but somewhat in isolation of the larger community. Although this listserv
> has provided some interaction and indeed the Cookbook has provided support
> for a common way of doing things, there is still tremendous disparity.
>
> When it comes to programming for searching or display of your finding
> aids, the systems person must now account for no less than 3 ways (in this
> example) of extracting the same information. Multiply this by all the
> discussions that have happened over the last couple years on this listserv
> alone and any true blue programmer might go screaming into the night into
> a fit of agony because the rules set s/he must write becomes almost
> infinite.
>
> My rants about this have often been countered with the argument that every
> archivist has their own tradition to follow and that adoption of EAD
> without the flexibility that has been imbedded in the DTD would not hae
> happened. This may well be true. But a vague and variously used DTD leaves
> little on which the systems person can build powerful tools.
>
> OF course, each archives can go its own way on these issues. And many
> archives have built good systems around their own encoding practices. The
> cost however, is that that archive then incurs the cost of creating its
> own stylesheets, own system, own tools that might aid in speeding encoding
> processes. Or perhaps the cost it incurs is that it's finding aids can not
> be used in creative and innovative ways because it cannot bear the costs
> of doing all of its own technical work.
>
> If on the other hand, common understandings and implementations in
> markup of these elements can be determined, then the cost of development
> of a wide variety of interoperable tools can be shared by the community.
>
> EAD has been a marvelous step forward in thinking about access aids. But
> EAD as a vocabulary of XML needs to be rethought if the archival community
> is to take advantage of the vast potential of a markup language. And it
> needs to start with the development of a common set of understandings of
> the semantics of the elements(tags) themselves. That can only happen in
> the archival community. But as long as there are 3 or 4 ways of encoding
> essentially the same content then it will be difficult at best to build
> the kind of exciting systems that others have using XML and its
> applications.
>
> Liz Shaw
> Visiting Lecturer
> Room 626 IS Building
> Department of Library and Information Sciences
> School of Information Science
> University of Pittsburgh
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
> Phone: (412)624-9455
> Fax: (412)648-7001
--
Kent M. Haworth (416) 736-5442
University Archivist fax: (416) 650-8039
& Head, Special Collections
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ASC home page: http://info.library.yorku.ca/depts/asc/archives.htm
"...the past is not the past. It is the context. The past -- memory --
is one of the most powerful, practical tools available to a civilized
democracy. John Ralston Saul, 2000-03-24
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