Description: Conveying Information to Users

The methods and tools of description are continually evolving, driven in part by the need to document new forms of recordkeeping, especially electronic data.  Current techniques and descriptive instruments are clearly inadequate for documenting transactions carried out on computers.  Archivists must learn how to incorporate system-generated descriptions of their collections into the larger framework of archival descriptive systems for documentation and retrieval.

The other compelling force affecting archivists is the environment in which they document their collections.   Increasingly, this is an electronic world of remote access by distant users working without direct staff mediation.  Many archival institutions are challenged to broaden their clientele, to reach out to students and other constituencies who may be less familiar with archives and the use of primary resources. More and more, archivists are being asked to deliver electronically not only the descriptive  information about their collections, but also the documents themselves.  Issues relating to access, presentation, and navigation of collections are affecting policy and practice as much as more theoretical concerns about provenance and respect des fonds.

Better tools must be developed to enable seamless searching and navigation  across a complex information space containing catalog records, inventories/registers, and original documents, and also to facilitate the display  of the results in a comprehensible way.   Current Internet search and retrieval systems do not appear to be up to the task; they are better suited to an environment of homogeneous data.  There are other possibilities.  The ANSI Z39.50 standard enables controlled search and retrieval across diverse databases including MARC records, full-text files, and eventually archival inventories/registers.  This standard is what makes such integration possible.   Perhaps extensions to the HTML and SGML markup languages will be the vehicle for disseminating both descriptive metadata and digital collections in the future.

Certainly the differences between summary and detailed descriptions, between catalog records and inventories/registers, will become less distinct and significant.  The two types of description may even merge.  In the past, they were distinguished by differences in appearance and depth of detail.  For the past ten years, there has been the additional distinction that catalog records have been widely available as MARC records but inventories/registers could be searched only locally. As inventories/registers become available on the Web, the differences between them and electronic catalog records will blur even further.

Will the electronically encoded inventory/register replace the summary MARC record?   The answer will become clearer as more sophisticated search engines are developed and EAD is employed more widely.  However, MARC records will remain viable for a long time to come; they are still the most widely used standards-based tool for information interchange.  Archivists will continue to need to contribute information about their holdings to local and international on-line catalogs.   Users will continue to want concise summaries as they quickly scan large bodies of archival documentation.

A blending of summary and detailed information into a new descriptive tool would certainly simplify both the descriptive and searching processes.   No longer would catalogs and inventories/registers be distinctive products, created separately.   Rather, the user would simply encounter different presentations of the same underlying data either a summary overview of the whole or a detailed documentation of some component.  This accomplishment will require the development of a new descriptive standard, one that focuses on content and not the format of its presentation to users.