On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, Fox, Michael wrote:
> My instinctive response would be
>
> <c>
> <did>
> <container type="box">1</container>
> <container type="folder">1</container>
> <unitdate>2/16/1947</unitdate>
> <origination>John Smith</origination>
> <unittitle><persname role="recipient">William Jones</persname></unittitle>
> <abstract>Memorandum concerning business</abstract>
> </did>
> </c>
I like Michael's tagging solution above with the following alterations:
1. I hope that he *meant* to encourage use of the level attribute, in
which case that opening <c> would be encoded as <c level="item"> ;-)
2. It seems to me that "memorandum concerning business" and other short
topical blurbs like this might, arguably, be encoded as part of the
supplied title information in <unittitle>, especially in cases above where
you have nothing in <unittitle> other than the name of the recipient. If
there are 20 letters/memoranda from John Smith to William Jones in this
collection, and if you, as in the example above, decide to encode date and
brief form of material/topical description of each item outside of
<unittitle>, you'll essentially end up with 20 things that have exactly
the same <unittitle> (which might not necessarily be a problem, but it
does dilute the identifying function of the title).
I think the ISAD(G) advice on construction of supplied titles is helpful
in thinking about Katherine's example:
"At lower levels [levels below fonds/collection/record group] include, for
example, the name of the creator and a term indicating the form of the
material comprising the unit of description and, where appropriate, a
phrase reflecting function, activity, subject, location, or theme."
It seems to me that if you are planning to encode <origination> separately
in a *consistent* manner throughout all levels of description within your
finding aids, then Michael's example above is fine. If not, I think all of
the information that Katherine has in her legacy item-level descriptions
does all the things that the above ISAD(G) excerpt recommends a supplied
title should. So you could encode as follows, following Michael's example
using the role attributes for <persname>:
<c level="item">
<did>
<container type="box">1</container>
<container type="folder">1</container>
<unitdate>2/16/1947</unitdate>
<unittitle><persname role="sender">John Smith</persname>, <persname
role="recipient">William Jones</persname>, Memorandum concerning
business</unittitle>
</did>
</c>
One other note here, it sure would be nice if there was some sort of
standardized list of role attribute values for roles that appear commonly
in everybody's archival collections! This would certainly enhance the
value of this type of encoded data in future union database situations!
--
Bill [log in to unmask]
Manuscripts Librarian | The UCI Libraries
Department of Special Collections | University of California
949 824.3113 | P.O. Box 19557
949 824.2472 FAX | Irvine, CA 92623-9557
|