Information Society and Finding Aids

The finding aid (sometimes referred to as the representation of records) has remained the main staple of describing, controlling and arranging of archival collections for the last century.  Digitally the finding aid has migrated into the digital world through MARC, EAD, XML and DACS markup tools. This migration however was only to describe analog objects [...]

Respect des Fonds and Original Order, breaking it and keeping it?

The digital world has been a marvelous invention and has proven itself, regardless of the atavistic and anachronistic voices that are still sometimes heard. In the realm of the archives, most archivists are attempting and grappling with the plethora of issues that have arisen from the new technologies, both good and bad. For archivists, an [...]

What makes a record historical and another not?

In the archives world there always seems to be quandaries (I think there always will be) when deciding what to keep. Do we base it on precedent, major events, social theory, macro-appraisal theory, or another of the myriad of ideas that have taken hold. The easy answer is, “just save the historical record.” But what [...]