ISAD(G) - General International Standard Archival Description

This article reports on a current project of the Bundesarchiv (National Archives of Germany), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). The project brings together in a collaborative portal the finding aids from archival records on SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) and FDGB (Free German Trade Union Federation) from five eastern German state archives. To accomplish this the locally available, heterogeneous data formats must be transformed into a common profile of the international standard format for inventories: Encoded Archival Description (EAD). In addition to EAD, the Encoded Archival Context (EAC) is applied for the presentation of the provenance of the archival materials and the Encoded Archival Guide (EAG) is used for the information on the archives themselves. However, in spite of the use of EAD, EAC and EAG, there are still many aspects that need to be considered regarding interoperability with content from other cultural heritage organizations such as libraries and museums. When archival inventories are combined with catalogue data from libraries, for example, the archives' content stays inhomogeneous to the libraries' content. One reason for this, among others, is the diversity of the treated objects themselves. While publications from libraries are treated as single objects, finding aids from archives resemble collections. They subsume descriptions of single objects previously defined by archivists. A particular aspect of this heterogeneity is that the single objects connected in inventories cannot exist without their context. In addition, the different requirements and traditions of libraries and archives create a continuing heterogeneity. In spite of this heterogeneity, in the future it would be beneficial if users could employ a common searching entrance that takes into consideration the differences of the various knowledge institutions...'Abstract'

	Full Record
Identifier	isad0017
Title	Using International Standards to Develop a Union Catalogue for Archives in Germany
Ot Other title	Aspects to Consider Regarding Interoperability between Libraries and Archives
Date	2008
Category type	Article
Description	This article reports on a current project of the Bundesarchiv (National Archives of Germany), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). The project brings together in a collaborative portal the finding aids from archival records on SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) and FDGB (Free German Trade Union Federation) from five eastern German state archives. To accomplish this the locally available, heterogeneous data formats must be transformed into a common profile of the international standard format for inventories: Encoded Archival Description (EAD). In addition to EAD, the Encoded Archival Context (EAC) is applied for the presentation of the provenance of the archival materials and the Encoded Archival Guide (EAG) is used for the information on the archives themselves. However, in spite of the use of EAD, EAC and EAG, there are still many aspects that need to be considered regarding interoperability with content from other cultural heritage organizations such as libraries and museums. When archival inventories are combined with catalogue data from libraries, for example, the archives' content stays inhomogeneous to the libraries' content. One reason for this, among others, is the diversity of the treated objects themselves. While publications from libraries are treated as single objects, finding aids from archives resemble collections. They subsume descriptions of single objects previously defined by archivists. A particular aspect of this heterogeneity is that the single objects connected in inventories cannot exist without their context. In addition, the different requirements and traditions of libraries and archives create a continuing heterogeneity. In spite of this heterogeneity, in the future it would be beneficial if users could employ a common searching entrance that takes into consideration the differences of the various knowledge institutions...'Abstract'
Format	text/html
Creator	Imhof, Andres
System requirements	Web browser/Adobe reader
Access Rights	No restriction
Subject	Describing Archives -Content Standard
Subject	standard format
Subject	General International Standard Archival Description. (ISAD G)
Identifier-URI	http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september08/imhof/09imhof.html
Remote access	ViewResource
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