Dear Maureen,

You are "spot on," as they say: context and evidence

This is not the first nor will it be the last advocacy of item-level cataloging.

If I may, let me use this opportunity to urge people to attend "Fonds and Bonds," a workshop on archival description organized by OCLC in collaboration with some archivists, to be held before the DC2014 conference in Austin, Texas. Date is October 8, 2014. Hosted by The Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Among the speakers are Valentine Charles from Europeana, and Kerstin Arnold, from the Bundesarchiv (Berlin), and active in the Archives Portal Europe (ApeX). They will discuss the non-trivial challenge of accommodating context-driven archival hierarchical description into an integrated cultural heritage environment dominated by item-level descriptions.

http://dcevents.dublincore.org/IntConf/index/pages/view/2014-archives

Daniel


On Aug 7, 2014, at 2:36 PM, Callahan, Maureen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I can’t agree more with Barbara/AAA’s approach and also the approach that Dan Santamaria and the other folks at Princeton took – give good description, good context AND digital facsimiles. The finding aid isn’t there to produce a gallery of pretty documents – it’s a representation of a collection of records that, in aggregate, helps answer tricky questions about context and evidence and contradictions in the historical record. Respect des fonds, amirite?
>
> Maureen
>
> From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Aikens, Barbara
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 12:18 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Kill The Finding Aid Blog, Written by History IT CEO Kristen Gwinn-Baker
>
> I also believe this to be a marketing strategy on the part of HistoryIT, which as far as I can tell is a consulting firm for technical archival/digitization/web services. It would appear that she is trying to get contracts with archives (although this tactic is certainly odd..at least to me) to do more detailed indexing – probably within finding aids or in their proprietary database. This blog, however, convinces me that the company has little understanding of archival realities, backlogs, large scale digitization, nor archival descriptive standards and best practices.
>
> There is a place for item level description of digital content AND for findings aids. But, a finding aid is the critical first step towards any later item level work. To suggest that item level cataloging of everything is the only way to make archival materials discoverable is, frankly, a bit ridiculous. Let the finding aid provide the foundation for prioritizing digitization, i.e., Digitization on Demand or User-driven Digitization. Further, Kristen’s example of a finding aid is not necessarily representative of all finding aids. Many finding aids provide substantially more detailed name access.
>
> And about the feasibility of an item level descriptive approach, here is some statistical information from AAA’s digitization program.
>
> · From 8/1/2013-8/7/2013, we digitized 1,078 archival items, which were item level cataloged by a full-time cataloger whose primary job is to item level catalog digital items.
> · During the same period, we digitized 12 archival collections measuring 76.5 cubic feet in their entirety, resulting in 97,376 digital items. This work was completed according to our large scale digitization workflow wherein the EAD finding aid created by the processing archivist serves as the ONLY descriptive metadata for the digital content, and this description is on the folder level only.
>
> Has the lack of item level descriptions resulted in complaints from our users???? With this latter approach resulting in 1,440 cubic feet digitized and 1.8 million digital files available online – No complaints from our users!
>
> Gotta run.....need to get some finding aids online!
>
>
> Barbara D. Aikens
> Head of Collections Processing | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
> Email: [log in to unmask] | Phone: 202.633.7941
>
> Visit our website and the Terra Foundation Center for Digital Collections.
> Follow us on Twitter and Facebook
>
> FedEx, UPS, and DHL deliveries: 750 9th Street, NW (at H) | Suite 2200 | Washington, DC 20001
> U.S. Postal deliveries: PO Box 37012 | Victor Building, Suite 2200, MRC 937 | Washington, DC 20013-7012
>
> From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Callahan, Maureen
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 11:40 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Kill The Finding Aid Blog, Written by History IT CEO Kristen Gwinn-Baker
>
> I think a few things about this:
>
> 1. This is kind of a silly post based on misunderstandings of archival functions, and maybe we shouldn’t feed the trolls? Obviously, her point of view on this is financially advantageous to her. However, I do think that we can and should be digitizing more of our holdings. I wrote about this in the context of a job I had previously, here.
> 2. That having been said, I don’t really understand the data model she’s proposing. A zillion item nodes, each beautifully described, floating in the cosmos of the internet? This, to me, is the digital equivalent of the garbage bag full of paper. The structure of a finding aid helps us understand what came before, what came after, and how it all relates to each other. More than that, it’s a way for us to record the stuff that isn’t in the records themselves – where this came from, what happened to it before it was here. And the best finding aids provide a descriptive superstructure that makes sense of it all, in a way that just trawling through the records can’t do.
> 3. We can’t describe each item. Think of all the crazy projects in the 1960s and 1970s to create index cards for each piece of correspondence in a collection. In so many cases, the work was never finished – because it’s impossible and kind of unnecessary.
> 4. Even if we could describe each item, we shouldn’t. I really think that our professional practice is about making choices about appropriate levels of description and giving the right kinds of meaningful information in that description. More, I really believe, isn’t better. Better is better. She’s not wrong that contents lists are often weak, but I don’t think that it’s because we don’t have enough information. I think it’s because we often give kind of useless information (“correspondence – general.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Why was it produced? What kinds of evidence of historical events does this provide?)
>
> But that’s just me.
> Maureen
>
> Maureen Callahan
> Archivist, Metadata Specialist
> Manuscripts & Archives
> Yale University Library
> [log in to unmask]
> 203.432.3627
>
> Webpage: web.library.yale.edu/mssa
> Collections: drs.library.yale.edu
>
> From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 11:23 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Kill The Finding Aid Blog, Written by History IT CEO Kristen Gwinn-Baker
>
> If only we had billions of dollars to digitize and transcribe every item!
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Aikens, Barbara <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> http://blog.historyit.com/
>
> I can’t even comment further in public.
>
> Barbara D. Aikens
> Head of Collections Processing | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
> Email: [log in to unmask] | Phone: 202.633.7941
>
> Visit our website and the Terra Foundation Center for Digital Collections.
> Follow us on Twitter and Facebook
>
> FedEx, UPS, and DHL deliveries: 750 9th Street, NW (at H) | Suite 2200 | Washington, DC 20001
> U.S. Postal deliveries: PO Box 37012 | Victor Building, Suite 2200, MRC 937 | Washington, DC 20013-7012