Rethinking Archives
The INDI project has been a very thought provoking endeavor for INDI team members. It has forced us to examine the ways that archival principles are applied in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections and to ask ourselves whether or not we are meeting our intended goals. We have carefully analyzed the ways in which we apply the concepts of appraisal, acquisition, arrangement, description, and open access to the varied collections in our stewardships. We have noted the interrelationships between each of these concepts and struggled to decide on the best way to automate them. This process has been ongoing for the last 18 months. It was recently revitalized with the hire of a new lead programmer, Curtis Thacker, for the INDI project. The project team has spent the last couple of months working with Curtis to help him gain a better understanding of the archival needs that have driven the creation of the system and we are now working to better document the decisions that we have made and how they need to be implemented in the INDI system. It has been exciting to conceptualize new and improved ways of accomplishing our primary tasks as archivists. It has also re-emphasized the importance of being standards compliant. This has become particularly evident as we have been working on the data model and flowcharting the processes of arrangement and description in preparation for beginning work on the Arrangement and Description Module in early 2008. In building the data model we have consulted closely Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) and looked at best practice guidelines concerning the use of Encoded Archival Description (EAD). This close consultation led us to two conclusions: 1) if we were going to build compliance with DACS into INDI then perhaps our staff should know how to use it and 2) if we planned to leverage Encoded Archival Description in our consortial environment, then we needed to have our own best practice guidelines. Recently Cory Nimer and Gordon Daines completed work on the Church Consortium of Libraries and Archives (CCLA) EAD Best Practice Guidelines. These new guidelines are being used to help finalize the arrangement data model and they are being used to build a new database delivery system for our finding aids. Gordon and Cory have also recently completed a series of trainings on how to use DACS in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections and the project team is working to integrated DACS concepts into the INDI help system. All archivists should be forced to revisit the way that they apply archival principles and to think seriously about why we do what we do–we might be surprised by what we find.
You’ll notice that both of the standards that we are using as the basis of our arrangement data model are descriptive standards. It begs the question–Where are our arrangement standards? Archivists need to seriously examine arrangement to see if it can be standardized and to develop a more solid footing for arrangement theory. We also need to think carefully about the relationship between arrangement and description. Should our descriptions reflect a physical arrangement or should they reflect an intellectual arrangement? What does original order mean? Whose original order? Original order at what point in time? Just a few questions to ponder.