Descriptive Standards for Catalog Records

Data content standards for catalog records
Several standards govern the content of catalog descriptions.
 
Archives, Personal Papers and Manuscripts
Archives, Personal Papers and Manuscripts (APPM) is the most widely employed data content standard for the description of textual collections in the United States. The rules outlined in APPM are intended to provide guidance within the general context of  the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2). Many repositories use APPM in place of Chapter 4 of AACR2, which focuses on bibliographic control rather than archival control.

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed.
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed. (AACR2) is a comprehensive set of rules for the description of bibliographic materials and the access points provided for them. Because AACR2 has focused on bibliographic description, APPM and a number of other data content standards have been developed to supplement it and to address the special requirements of cataloging other forms and formats of materials.

Rules for Archival Description
The Association of Canadian Archivists' Rules for Archival Description (RAD) is based on the premise that all description exists in a multi-level context.  It provides a detailed set of rules that cover maps, photographs, electronic records, and sound recordings as well as textual materials.

International Standard Archival Description-General
The International Council on Archives (ICA) has adopted the International Standard Archival Description-General (ISAD-(G)) as a general purpose descriptive cataloging convention.  It is an enabling rather than prescriptive standard, one intended to encompass multiple national descriptive protocols.  As such, it lacks the specificity and direction found in APPM, RAD, and other specialized protocols that govern the description of archival collections of photographs, moving images, and oral history interviews.

Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historic Collections
Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historic Collections provides guidelines for describing graphic/visual materials either as individual items or groups. It supplements AACR2 for those who catalog prints, photographs, drawings, and other graphic and visual items. It is accompanied by two companion publications, the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I and II.

Oral History Cataloging Manual
The Oral History Cataloging Manual provides guidelines for the cataloging of oral history interviews either as part of  collections of interviews, or as individual interviews.
 
Archival Moving Images: A Cataloging Manual
Archival Moving Images: A Cataloging Manual provides cataloging rules for the description of archival motion pictures and videotape recordings. It, like APPM and Graphic Materials, supplements AACR2 for these special types of materials.

Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings, 5th ed.
The Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings is a guide for assigning topical heading and subdivisions from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)  and provides practical guidelines of the procedures to follow.
 
Data value standards for catalog records
Several standards exist that govern the data values, or terminology, that is used in certain data categories in archival description.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is a comprehensive listing of the headings used by the Library of Congress and thousands of libraries and archives. LCSH provides topical headings that describe the content or subjects of books and archival materials.

Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)
The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) provides vocabulary for the description of archival materials. It can be used as a source of topical, form and genre, occupation, and function terms, and also provides terminology to describe the materials of which items are made, and the processes and techniques of their making.

Thesaurus for Graphic Materials
The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials has two parts. The first, Subject Terms (TGM1) is a source for topical terms for graphic materials, based on LCSH headings; the other, Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms (TGM2) provides terminology for the description of the form and genre of these types of materials.  

Library of Congress Name Authority File (NAF)
The Library of Congress Name Authority File (NAF) enumerates the preferred form of hundreds of thousands of personal and corporate names. The file contains links to alternative and variant forms of names, as well as pseudonyms, to guide the user to the authorized form of name.
 
Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)
The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) serves as a source of authority data for the names of artists. Alternatives, spelling variants, nicknames, and pseudonyms for an individual are clustered so that a preferred form may be chosen. Entries also include biographical data (e.g., life dates, role) and bibliographic citations referring to the artist.
 
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)
The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) provides a hierarchically structured listing of geographic names worldwide, including historical names, linked to their modern equivalents.

Data interchange standards for catalog records
The USMARC Format for Bibliographic Data is a widely used interchange standard employed by many archives. It specifies multiple categories of information that are used to describe bibliographic and archival materials, as well as other formats. In this capacity it functions as a data structure standard. The individual data values entered into the fields receive a variety of codes that specify additional information.

Descriptive Standards for Inventories/Registers

Data content standards for inventories/registers
While the contents and structure of inventories/registers remains largely a matter of local practice, recent analysis has demonstrated considerable similarity in the practices of many repositories as institutions have adopted models developed by the Library of Congress and the National Archives of the United States.   Several content standards are emerging.  The Canadian Rules for Archival Description (RAD), with its focus on multi-level description, has been suggested as a possible data content standard for inventories/registers. The Encoded Archival Description (EAD), with its companion Application Guidelines, is another option under development.

There is, of course, significant overlap between the content found in catalog entries and that found in inventories/registers.  The latter contain the same types of information as the former, although expanded. This information includes creator, title, dates, physical extent, scope and contents, administrative or biographical data, and administrative information on access, restrictions, and similar matters.
 
Data value standards for inventories/registers
No explicit standards governing data values or structure are applied to inventories at this time.  Insofar as key data elements in an inventory/register mirror the information found in a catalog entry, the standards that apply to the latter may be used in the former.   Where such standards have been applied in an inventory, e.g. the name of the creator of the collection has been formed according to AACR2 standards, the EAD encoding scheme provides a mechanism both for noting the standard used to construct the term, and for citing the relevant authority file entry.

Data interchange standards for inventories/registers
The only communication format that current exists for inventories/registers is the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) The EAD is a data structure and data interchange standard that defines the structural elements of archival inventories and their interrelationships. For example, it provides a method for encoding the text of an inventory/register so that one could specify that a particular piece of information is the title of a file, and that this file is part of a particular series.

The EAD standard is written in the syntax of a Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) Document Type Definition. Version 1.0 of EAD is also compliant with Extensible Markup Language (XML). EAD is the intellectual property of the Society of American Archivists through its international EAD Working Group. The Library of Congress serves as the maintenance agency for EAD. More information about the standard and related documentation may be found at http://lcweb.loc.gov/ead/