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Apologies for duplications through cross-posting!

To archivists attending the SAA annual meeting in Denver later this
month:

What is ISAD(G) (General International Standard Archival Description) all
about and how can it help me in my day-to-day work?  This question might
well be on the minds of archivists today.  ISAD(G) has just been through
its first 5-year revision cycle (a process in which SAA's Technical
Subcommittee on Descriptive Standards participated) and has emerged
stronger and more clearly articulated. Michael Fox of the Minnesota
Historical Society represented the SAA on the Committee on Descriptive
Standards, the International Council on Archives (ICA) unit charged with
the care and feeding of ISAD(G).

ISAD(G) defines standard elements of archival description.  It does not
specify how they should be arranged in a specific output or descriptive
product (in other words, it will not tell you what your finding aids
should look like, either encoded in EAD or in a word-processed document),
nor does it specify content for elements of archival description (in other
words, it doesn't supplant content standards like APPM and RAD).  ISAD(G)
doesn't define anything new; in fact, many of our existing descriptions
are likely compatible to a great extent with ISAD(G)'s elements.

ISAD(G) seems here to stay as a powerful tool for archivists the world
over to use in standardizing the types of information they use in
describing their collections, record groups, and fonds.  As more of us
turn to the World Wide Web as a venue for delivering both surrogate
descriptions of our materials and, increasingly, digital objects
themselves, the stakes are higher for us to engage in standardization
activities in our own repositories that will make our archival
descriptions and digital materials (both digital originals and digital
facsimiles) easier to use online for traditional and newly discovered
patrons.

The Description Section's annual Finding Aids Fair has generally been
focused on the finding aid as a freely floating object for inspection,
divorced from any analysis of the descriptive standards that either do or
do not underpin it. At the 64th SAA annual meeting in Denver, in the
Exhibitor's Hall that will be open on Thursday and Friday, August
31-September 1, the Description Section will hold a different kind of
Finding Aid Fair.  The 2000 Fair will focus on providing those who wander
through with a better understanding of ISAD(G) and its relationship to the
various descriptive tools that we produce (e.g., word-processed,
EAD-encoded, or database-derived finding aids and collection-level MARC
records).

All interested attendees at this year's annual meeting are invited to
bring along examples of your current finding aids or other descriptive
tools so that you can evaluate for yourselves how your tools fare in
relation to the international standard embodied by ISAD(G).  The 2000
Finding Aid Fair is being designed to be self-paced and self-educational,
so no one will be looking over your shoulder analyzing your descriptive
tools.  There is no single "right" way of implementing ISAD(G) in your
repository practice, but there will be several examples of finding aids
that illustrate a variety of ways of incorporating ISAD(G). Also featured
will be crosswalks to help attendees understand how ISAD(G) elements map
to encoding standards such as EAD and USMARC.  The Finding Aids Fair will
hopefully be informative and useful even if you don't choose to bring
along one of your own finding aids to evaluate.  Much of the information
presented at the Finding Aids Fair will be made available on the Web
following the SAA meeting in Denver.

So bring a finding aid!  Bring a friend!  Plan to spend some time in
Denver learning a bit more about how ISAD(G) might be beneficial to you
right where you work!

--
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