Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Arranging and cataloguing digital and hybrid archives > EAD templates for a personal archive
EAD templates for a personal archive
Deciding on the level of description required
A collection-level description should be compiled for a digital or hybrid archive as early as possible, both for reasons of appraisal (see Chapter 04 Appraisal and disposal) and in order to draw together the various sections of an archive and set them in context; some degree of administrative metadata should also be recorded in the collection-level description, so that the archive can be managed appropriately with regard to rights and data protection. It may be that archivsts opt to produce collection level descriptions for researchers before deciding on final arrangement and moving down to lower levels of description; this will allow a minimum level of intellectual access and enable researchers to identify material of interest, even if they cannot link directly to it at this stage.
In an ideal world, full item-level descriptions of all archival holdings would be produced; and in the world of hybrid archives it would be useful to drill down to a low level, so that researchers can fully understand an archive and its various components, as well as the kind of formats and record types it contains.
Paradigm's Academic Advisory Board believed that full descriptions will be of most use to researchers. Similarly research carried out by the Archives Hub in 2005 suggests that the two main priorities of their users (primarily information professionals, students and academic researchers) are the addition of further online catalogues to the Hub and having access to fuller, item-level descriptions.
Arguments in favour of cataloguing digital archives to item level in EAD
- To deliver what users want in an online catalogue.
- To mediate between the researcher and the digital object, providing rich contextual information and ensuring that users fully understand the archival item.
- To distinguish clearly between the hard-copy and digital elements of a hybrid archive, and to draw out the relationships between these elements more fully.
- To enable direct links to be made from the catalogue entry to the digital object it describes, something which was also highlighted as important by the Academic Advisory Board and by users of online archive catalogues.
- Often researchers want to see what an archive contains by browsing the catalogue before having direct access to original material. If archivists only catalogue to folder level, and the link to born-digital material occurs at that level, readers will not benefit from having access to a full catalogue description of the component items.
- Producing item level descriptions provides fuller intellectual control over the archive, which will help to ensure that the archive is administered in a way which protects the interests of those who are represented in it.
- Basic item-level metadata can be extracted automatically, making cataloguing at this level less labour-intensive.
Arguments against cataloguing digital archives to item level in EAD
- Each digital object will be wrapped in its own METS file, which should contain sufficient automatically extracted metadata to render the object self-describing and independently understandable. Users should therefore be able to view item-level digital objects directly from a higher level in the catalogue and still have access to an adequate level of descriptive metadata about individual items.
- Even in the world of traditional archives, institutions often lack funding and staff time to devote to compiling full item-level descriptions of all their collections. Given that the quantity of material in a digital archive is likely to be much greater than that in a traditional archive, item-level cataloguing is less likely to be feasible.
- In many cases, the historical value of individual records within an archive will not be high enough to warrant item-level description. This may be even more relevant in the digital environment where archives (even after appraisal) are likely to be much larger.
- Full text search technologies will allow researchers to search directly on the content of certain categories of textual digital archival objects; this means that catalogue information can afford to be less detailed.
- Cataloguing the digital component of a hybrid archive to item level but not the hard copy element may lead to an imbalance between the two components, with the hard copy material becoming 'hidden'.
