A review of existing practice |
...an eLib supporting study |
Until comparatively recently most archivists would have dismissed the idea that an archive could be described as a collection at all. In archival theory and practice an archive is a whole which documents the life and work of an institution or individual, which has been retained in its original working order and is of known provenance. As such it may include every form of document, minutes, case-notes, memoranda, files, report books, plans, deeds, patents, letters, diaries, contracts etc., in hard copy (manuscript, typescript or printed) or electronic form; all types of audio-visual materials; printed books, where they form an integral part of the record of the institution as individual; and even objects where again they may form an integral part of the record. The latter may range from reference samples of manufactured glass through to a poem written on the headband of a hat by a leading poet. Internationally this whole is commonly described as a fonds.
Catalogues to archives are generally arranged hierarchically and commonly stop short of item level descriptions. To avoid duplicating information at a number of levels, contextual information is pushed as far up the hierarchy of description as possible. A clear description of this procedure is offered in the International Council on Archives standard, ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description (1993) [ISADG], and also the Manual of Archival Description compiled by Michael Cook and Margaret Proctor.
In contrast to archives, the term collection has tended to be used, again until comparatively recently, to describe groups of items, sometimes of linked interest, typically compiled by an individual and as likely to lodged in a library as an archive repository. In libraries such collections are sometimes managed in comparable ways to special collections of printed books or rare books and catalogued item by item. In archival repositories (which may or may not form part of libraries) they may be referred to as artificial collections and are catalogued at a variety of levels depending on the particular interest of the material and the ease with which the information can be conveyed to the potential user. Disparate collections, per item, take longer to catalogue than coherent archives. As a research resource such collections are not invariably regarded as reliable, in terms of authenticity and date, or as rich a source of information as a whole archive because they often lack related contextual information about why records were compiled and how used by their creators. Such collections may be further impoverished if standard library practices are used in cataloguing and the interrelationship of items is disregarded.
Because of the need for a distinguishing terminology, and in the context of wide-ranging discussion of providing networked access to catalogues, the concept of a collection level description has become commonly used in recent years to refer to the highest level of description of both individual archives or collections. In terms of ISAD(G) this generally means fonds level, the level at which an archive as a whole may be described. Minimum conformity to ISAD(G) includes a reference code, which includes country and repository codes, and repository specific catalogue codes and numbers; dates of creation of the archives; title of archive; extent and a statement of the level at which the holding is described. Both the National Council on Archives Networking Policy Committee, and the Scottish Record Office, in its SCAN project to provide a networked access to Scottish archives, recognise this minimum as an acceptable basis for fonds/collection level description and therefore participation in a national network. This conclusion, however, is born of a desire to promote maximum networked access to holdings in the near future and a recognition of the scale of the challenge faced by number of repositories, particularly those external to the Higher Education sector, rather than a recognition of the adequacy of this number of elements. It is indicative, in Scotland, that the title element is expanded to include some brief administrative or biographical information. It is also the case that many archivists would wish to see several more of the 26 elements of ISAD(G) included in a minimum specification than the authors of ISAD(G) suggested.
ISAD(G) rules may generally be applied without difficulty to artificial collections, especially since their hierarchies are either non-existent or extremely simple. There is, however, some discomfort about this approach among curators of large numbers of older very small manuscript collections (sometimes single volumes), many of which have an individual provenance, and which might arguably be treated as individual collections in their own right. Precisely because they are not proper fonds and may be literally one item. Experiments in the National Library of Scotland suggest that it may be possible to impose retrospective collection status on groups of themed or chronologically linked items for purposes of network presentation but if this was to extend to imposition of some form of provenance it is unlikely that it would gain widespread acceptance within the archival community.
Because of the size and complexity of the catalogues to many archives, repositories prepare guides to holdings. This is understood as good practice with regard to outreach and the preparation of good quality attractive published guides has been encouraged through competition by the Society of Archivists. The function of a guide is to provide a brief introduction to holdings, sufficient for the average reader to decide whether it is worth inspecting detailed catalogues further.
An individual entry describing an archive or collection may or may not equate to a collection level description depending on the level of detail included. Minimum ISAD(G) is sufficient only to identify and locate a fond or collection. An entry the equivalent to a published guide will normally include a wider range of elements which cover scope and content, administrative and biographical background and terms of access to the original material.
Patricia Methven, King's College London