Report of the Sub-committee on Finding Aids Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Finding Aids

1. Preface

The Sub-committee was established at the first plenary meeting of the ICA Committee on Descriptive Standards in Florence, Italy in November 1998 and named the ICA/CDS Sub-committee on Finding Aids. The project assigned to the sub-committee was envisioned much earlier by Charles Kecskeméti, former secretary of the ICA, who saw it as the primary task of the Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards (ICA/DDS), the predecessor of the ICA Committee on Descriptive Standards. However, the ICA/DDS determined that such a project was premature and could not be accomplished without first establishing content standards, which resulted in the development of ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF).

Upon examining the mandate statement given it at the plenary session of the ICA/CDS in Florence, the Sub-committee on Finding Aids concluded that the format in which it was to report its findings should be, in the first instance, in the form of a report to the ICA/CDS. Thus, a preliminary report was produced and submitted to the ICA/CDS at its plenary session in The Hague in October 1998. The ICA/CDS received the preliminary report and directed the Sub-committee to continue its work. The Sub-committee met in Paris in March 1999 and submitted Draft Guidelines to the ICA/CDS for review at its plenary meeting in Stockholm in September 1999.

The current document is the result of these activities. It was accepted by the ICA/CDS and released for publication in 2001.

2. Principles and Statement of Purpose

2.1 This document gives guidelines for the preparation and presentation of archival descriptions which will result in a wide variety of finding aids, the elements and rules of which are specified by ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF).

2.2 Consistent with the objectives of ISAD(G), I.1, the principles which govern the preparation of finding aids are:

a) to provide access to archival material by communicating information about them to users;
b) to produce accurate, consistent and self explanatory finding aids;
c) to represent the context and content of the archival material being described by applying the rules of multilevel description (see ISAD(G)2.).

The above principles are independent of the technical tools that are available, or have been developed, to apply these guidelines. Examples of such tools would be encoding tools (e.g., EAD, MARC formats, HTML), databases or other automated tools, software programs, etc.

2.3 The application of the guidelines will result in finding aids which will:

a) facilitate the retrieval and exchange of information about archival material;
b) enable the sharing of authority data; and
c) make possible the integration of finding aids from different repositories.

3. Application

3.1 These guidelines apply specifically to ISAD(G) and/or ISAAR(CPF) compliant finding aids. Many conventional finding aids already exist which are fully or partially compliant with ISAD(G) and/or ISAAR(CPF). A compilation, analysis and a typology of these have been placed in Appendix A.

3.2 A comprehensive finding aid system should integrate non-compliant finding aids with finding aids produced in accordance with these guidelines.

It is recommended that institutions or organizations which are responsible for the creation of finding aids consider a careful design of an integrated finding aid system where each finding aid is designed in conjunction with others so as to complement, augment and support each other, with the aim of making the holdings of the organization or institution fully accessible in all its detail and all of its aspects. If the main component of the finding aid system is description of archives, other components may be authority files, indexes, lists, thesaurus, etc.

To ensure consistency in creating an integrated finding aid system, it is recommended that institutions create and maintain a manual of policies and procedures.

3.3 Finding aids may be generated in both manual and automated environments. In order to present users with an effective finding aid system, it is important to define the purposes of finding aids by:

b) stating its purpose;
c) characterizing its contents; and
d) establishing a format for its presentation.

4. Recommended Guidelines

4.1 Preparation

4.1.1 Information about the finding aid should include:

a) the intellectual responsibility (institution or individual) for the finding aid;
b) the type of finding aid and its contents;
c) the general rules used for the descriptions;
d) the date when the information was first made available and subsequently revised.

4.1.2 Information about the contents of the finding aid should include all 26 or a subset of the 26 elements of description in ISAD(G) with, in all cases, the inclusion of the specified essential elements. Beyond the essential elements of description, the selection of additional elements will depend on the nature and/or the purpose of the finding aid envisaged.

4.1.3 Access points derived from a description must be formed in accordance with ISAAR(CPF) to facilitate effective (i.e., meaningful) retrieval of descriptions relevant to a search query. (See ISAD(G), I.14). These guidelines assume that indexes are lists of access points derived from units of description in the finding aid.

4.2 Presentation

4.2.1 Information about the structure of the finding aid should include:

a) the presentation of the entire multilevel hierarchy of the units of description, i.e., the levels of description to which the information refers, i.e., fonds, series, files, items, and their places in the hierarchy;
b) navigation devices to adjacent levels (up or down) in the hierarchy. It is desirable to reach all levels directly. The multilevel technique may be illustrated by labels or graphical symbols, hyperlinks or any other linking technique that allows the understanding of the structure;
c) the use of labels to name the elements of description;
d) the provision of multilingual descriptions in the languages of the descriptions for institutions which hold multilingual holdings.

Appendix A

Review of types of traditional or conventional finding aids in relation to ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF)

The analysis that appears below is based on what the Sub-committee considers to be the most commonly occurring types of finding aids from an international point of view. There are undoubtedly many other existing types of finding aids which are either institution specific, cultural or language specific, specific to a particular national practice or are prepared for a specific purpose, such as an exhibition, specific thematic topic, etc. The sub-committee considered an analysis of these other types of finding aids, their number and variety, to be beyond its scope.

1. Existing or traditional finding aids dealt with in this section were considered in the light of ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF) and the following two fundamental aspects which might characterize them:

a) the levels of descriptions included in a finding aid;
b) the elements of description used for each of the levels (fonds, series, etc.) included in a finding aid.

2. With respect to different levels of descriptions included in a finding aid, these finding aids may be divided into three main classes:

Class A: Finding aids that include descriptions at only the fonds, and/or subfonds levels. In international archival literature there is a broad consensus about the characteristics and purposes of this type of finding aid. This consensus is reflected in the words used to name it, the most common being a “guide” (in English and French); also État des fonds (in French) and catalog (in English); guida (in Italian); guía (in Spanish); guia (in Portuguese).

The purpose of the Guide is to provide an overview of fonds and/or collections. The main characteristics of the Guide are:

a) to describe only the highest levels (fonds, subfonds);
b) to provide summary information about creators and archival materials.

Guides are produced to describe the holdings of one or more repository or to describe documents on specific themes and/or in specific formats (maps, photographs, etc.). In addition to the description of archival material, guides can also include general information about archival institutions that hold the documents and the services they provide.

Class B: Finding aids that include descriptions of archival material at all levels, down to and including the file level.

Generally, the basic unit of description in these finding aids is the series. These finding aids may or may not include lists of files or volumes, boxes, folders etc. However, it supplies all the elements needed to retrieve the archival material of the fonds and series being described.

Examples of the terms used for this class are inventory (in English); inventario (in Italian and Spanish); répertoire (in French); inventário (in Portuguese).

Class C: Finding aids that include descriptions of items. This class can be sub-divided into two categories. The first category consists of item descriptions that are treated as the last level of a finding aid for a fonds. The second category consists of item descriptions treated as single entities without giving a hierarchical context to the item listed in the finding aid. An example of the first category might be an inventaire (sommaire or analytique in French); inventario analitico (in Italian); for the second category, a calendar (in English); catalogue (in English and French); catálogo (in Spanish).

Diagram 1 illustrates the various types of finding aids discussed and what they cover in terms of levels of description.

3. The Subcommittee on Finding aids has concluded that it should only make recommendations regarding finding aids which conform to the principles enunciated by the descriptive standards developed by the ICA, i.e., ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF). All other types of finding aids should be excluded from its analysis because such finding aids which are ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF) compliant are the only ones about which the ICA/CDS can suggest recommended practices. It is recognized that the other types of finding aids exist, will continue to be produced, have a legitimate and useful purpose and should not be discouraged.

Thus, this study and report excludes finding aids of the type labeled C2 in Diagram 1 as well as special purpose finding aids of that type.

DIAGRAM 1.

SCHEMA REPRESENTING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN LEVELS OF DESCRIPTION AND TYPES OF FINDING AIDS

A Finding aids which include descriptions at only fonds, and/or subfonds levels.

B Finding aids which include descriptions of archival material at all levels down to the file level.

C1 Finding aids with item descriptions treated as the last level of description of a fonds.

C2 Finding aids with item descriptions treated as single items without hierarchical context to what they are part of.

French version