PREFACE TO THE 1990 EDITION

And if the Archivist is here provided with a general guide rather than a detailed set of rules at least we should be sure that no theories are enunciated which are not applicable to archive work in any country, nor on the other hand any first principles omitted. In most sciences and arts it will be found that special cases can be satisfactorily met by any one who combines a sound theory with ordinary common sense and both with practical experience. It is that combination that we wish to commend to the Archivist.¹

HISTORY AND METHODOLOGY

The presentation of Rules for Archival Description (RAD) to the Canadian archival community represents three years of concentrated effort on the part of the Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards to realize several recommendations made by the Bureau of Canadian Archivist’s Canadian Working Group on Archival Descriptive Standards.² The Canadian Working Group recognized that the development of detailed standards and rules for the description of archives is one of the most complex matters for archivists to undertake. At the same time, the Canadian Working Group believed that the standardization of archival description was both possible and desirable for both users and keepers of archives.³ Efforts in this direction were already well advanced by Michael Cook and Margaret Procter⁴ in Great Britain and Steven Hensen⁵ in the United States of America. Although the process of descriptive standards development has taken a different course in Canada and some of our rules differ their efforts have made our own enterprise that much less problematic because we had the advantage of examining their work, and the work of others who have struggled before us with the development of rules for the description of archival materials.⁶ In Québec, the Association des archivistes du Québec recognized the importance of standardizing the format of finding aids in 1982 when it established an ad hoc working group and in 1984, Les instruments de recherche pour les archives was published as a means of accomplishing this objective.⁷

While it was prudent enough not to attempt to produce standards and rules in the limited period of a year (the length of its mandate), the Canadian Working Group did recommend the appointment of six committees to develop standards of description for textual archives, architectural drawings, photographic and other graphic material, moving image material, sound recordings, and machine readable archives. In addition, the Canadian Working Group also made several other significant recommendations affecting the descriptive practices of archivists, including the development of authority files, the use of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (second edition) rules for the formation of personal, geographic and corporate names, and the investigation of issues and problems related to the subject indexing of archives. At its last meeting, the Canadian Working Group recommended that a standards committee be established to ensure that their specific recommendations would be carried out and to direct generally the work of descriptive standards development on behalf of the profession.

The membership of the Committee on Descriptive Standards comprised two representatives from the Association des archivistes du Québec (AAQ) and two representatives from the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA). At its first meeting on 16 January 1987 the members of the Committee agreed to expand its membership to include the Secretary General of the Bureau and a representative of the National Archives of Canada as an observer. At the same time the Committee also changed its name to the Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards to more properly reflect its mandate as a planning and coordinating body. These functions were formalized in its mandate statement as follows:

continue the development of archival descriptive standards as required by the Canadian archival community; publish and disseminate archival descriptive standards as well as encourage their use through training programmes and publications; and assist in the establishment of mechanisms to maintain and revise the archival descriptive standards as required.

The Planning Committee then established several working groups, the first of which was the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level (hereafter referred to as the Fonds Level Working Group), appointed in March 1987 to produce a report that would include rules for description at the fonds level. At the same time working groups were established to develop rules for description of particular classes of material found in a fonds, e.g., textual records, moving image materials, graphic materials, and sound recordings.

When the Planning Committee reviewed the “Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level”⁸ and the responses of the archival community to it, it realized that general rules, Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition, 1988 Revision⁹, rules governing all levels of description for all media, analogous to chapter one of AACR2R, had to be drafted. With a chapter on general rules in place, the Fonds Level Working Group report could become a chapter on rules for the description of multiple media fonds. In addition, the other working groups responsible for the construction of rules for the description of particular media, could then work within the framework of description established by the general rules for description. Accordingly, the Planning Committee itself drafted General Rules for Description (chapter 1), and in consultation with the Fonds Level Working Group, revised their draft rules to produce Rules for Multiple Media Fonds (chapter 2). As can be seen from the table of contents subsequent chapters will contain rules for description of various media at the fonds, series, file and item levels. These chapters will be published and distributed once they have been reviewed and recommended for use by the archival profession in Canada.

RULES FOR ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION

In order to develop rules for the description of archival materials a thorough analysis of the process of description and of the way archivists arrange archival materials is necessary. Inevitably attention must be focussed on the fundamental principles guiding archivists in their descriptive work. With the exception of appraisal, perhaps no other aspect of archival work so demands our analysis of archival theory and principles as does archival description.

The archival community, nationally and internationally, has yet to arrive at a consensus on the principles governing its descriptive practices. Nevertheless, RAD is formulated in a way that takes into account the nature of archives and the common assumptions presently guiding archivists in their descriptive practices.10

The principles governing descriptive practice may be defined as the theoretical and practical underpinnings of any descriptive process, while descriptive standards can be characterized as general, officially agreed upon, and widely accepted frameworks that define the way the descriptive process should be carried out and which must be based on overriding and agreed upon principles. Rules governing description can be viewed as a set of instructions, as specific as possible, that embody standards in a particular context with the object of producing consistency in the descriptive process. The practical context in which the rules are applied depends on an understanding of the relationship between principles and standards.¹⁰

Archivists adhere to certain axioms which govern the way they arrange and describe a fonds, and these axioms will perforce determine the rules for the description of archives.¹¹ These axioms have guided the Planning Committee and its working groups in the formulation of rules for the description of a fonds and its parts. One axiom holds that records created or accumulated by one records creator must be kept together and not intermixed with the records of other creators, often referred to as respect des fonds.

A second axiom follows from the observance of respect des fonds: the way archives are described depends on their arrangement. Implicit in the archivist’s observance of respect des fonds is the assumption that the way a creator “automatically and organically created and/or accumulates records” will affect the way archivists arrange a fonds. A fonds cannot be described until it has been arranged. The authors of Toward Descriptive Standards underscored this vital link between arrangement and description when they stressed that “archival description must proceed from a thorough understanding of the concepts and practices of archival arrangement, which give all processes of administrative and intellectual control of archives their distinctive character.”¹² Similarly, levels of arrangement will determine the level of description and the authors of Toward Descriptive Standards recommended that archivists recognize five levels of arrangement (repository, fonds, series, filing unit, and item) and seven levels of description (inter-institutional, repository, thematic group, fonds, series, filing unit, and item).

Another axiom governing descriptive practice, also recommended by the authors of Toward Descriptive Standards, requires that all descriptive work must proceed from the general to the specific.¹³ In order to place the description of a series that is part of a fonds in context, one must have a description of the fonds of which the series is a part. Users must know the context in which the records they are consulting have been created. It is incumbent upon archivists, therefore, to have intellectual control of their holdings first at the fonds level, before proceeding to lower levels of description.

These axioms have guided the Planning Committee and its working groups in writing RAD. To ensure its successful implementation, it is vital that archivists understand the foundations and structures on which it is built and the philosophy and principles underlying it. RAD is based on the framework of AACR2R with appropriate modifications to reflect those archival principles governing the arrangement and description of a fonds and its parts. After examining alternatives for the description of archival materials in a standardized format, the Fonds Level Working Group recommended in its report to the Planning Committee the adoption of AACR2R as a framework for archival description.¹⁴ The Planning Committee endorsed this recommendation and accepted the approach taken by the Working Group to analyze each area in AACR2R, to evaluate its applicability to archival description and to modify the rules, explaining the reasons for any modifications. In its response to their report, the Planning Committee emphasized to the Fonds Level Working Group that any AACR2R rules could be modified to respect archival principles and in subsequent meetings with them a consensus was arrived at on the presentation of the rules as they appear in RAD.

In order to understand RAD it will be useful for archivists unfamiliar with the evolution of bibliographic standards and rules to understand the larger framework in which RAD and AACR2R reside. AACR2R represents an integrated approach to the description of materials normally found in libraries (as its table of contents for part I illustrates) and it is a generalist code of practice, “not specifically intended for specialist and archival libraries,” but one which can be used as the basis for the description of materials like those found in archives, with appropriate modifications.¹⁵ RAD provides archivists with a set of rules which “aim to provide a consistent and common foundation for the description of archival material within a fonds, based on traditional archival principles.”¹⁶

It is essential, therefore, that archivists using these rules in their descriptive work remember that they are an extension of AACR2R to cover materials in archives that are part of a fonds. In some cases RAD modifies or augments an AACR2R rule; in other cases the rules are equivalent to AACR2R. Because RAD is based on respect des fonds it does not provide specific rules for the description of collections or items that do not form part of a recognizable fonds. Collections are, unlike fonds, artificial accumulations of materials and often lack a natural, organic unity. However, the rules can be applied to the description of collections and discrete items and RAD provides archivists with guidance in this matter in the introductory rules (see Rule 0.1). If archivists wish to describe published materials they should consult the relevant chapters in AACR2R for guidance.

The levels of detail of description reflected in rules 0.29 and 1.0D are intended to provide institutions with some flexibility when choosing a particular level of detail for a finding aid. The contents and format for a particular type of finding aid (union list, repository/thematic guide, inventory, or list) are thus determined by the depth (or level of detail) of description required by an institution. Implicit in the provision of levels of detail of description is the necessity for institutions to define the purpose of their finding aids (both existing and projected) and establish the minimum level of detail required for descriptions appearing in each type of finding aid. It must be emphasized that RAD does not prescribe products, that is, it does not provide guidance on the types of finding aids archives should develop, or the form in which they are presented or distributed to users. That is a matter of institutional policy.¹⁷ Similarly, many rules provide for options in the application of a particular rule. Institutions are expected to develop their own policies and procedures for the application of an option as instructed in Rule 0.5.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Both the profession and Canadian archival institutions have invested heavily in the development of these rules, recognizing as they do the benefits which will derive from their application. The Planning Committee has made every effort to make the development of rules for description for Canadian archivists a collaborative process. Members participating in various media working groups have been chosen because of their own expressed interest and demonstrated expertise with a particular media and we are grateful to them for contributing their talents to this collective endeavour. The community at large has been kept informed of the progress of the Planning Committee’s work and is encouraged to respond, as they have done so in the past, to future Working Group reports as they appear.

While the profession has accepted responsibility for the development of the rules, archival institutions have also contributed generously to this project both singly, through the support of their staff’s attendance at working group meetings and their requests for leave to prepare working papers and other documents, and collectively through the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA). The Canadian Council of Archives’ survey of Canadian archives revealed arrangement and description as the most important of short- term provincial priorities.¹⁸ In the face of this acknowledged urgency the Planning Committee has appreciated the moral support and patience of the National Archives and many provincial/territorial institutions who have postponed significant institutional decisions respecting pressing descriptive projects until RAD is released.

The Planning Committee also acknowledges the interest shown in our work by our colleagues in the library profession. Their willingness to share their experiences in the development of descriptive standards and rules may help us to avoid making similar mistakes in the process of standards development and implementation. We are particularly grateful to the Canadian Library Association (CLA) and to the Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (ASTED) for giving us the rights to copy from both the English and French versions of AACR2R/RCAA2.

The development of RAD has been, and continues to be, a challenging task. The Planning Committee appreciates, from its own experience, that RAD’s implementation by institutions and use by archivists will require as much patience, careful study and reflection as that exercised by the Planning Committee and all its Working Groups in their development. The degree of success archivists will have in applying these rules to their descriptive work will depend upon the collective efforts of the Planning Committee, its Working Groups, and those in the profession who have taken the time to respond to the challenge of this endeavour. We can only hope that as archivists assess the rules they will apply, as Sir Hilary Jenkinson once commended, their “practical experience” combined with “sound theory” and “ordinary common sense.”

Kent M. Haworth,
Chairperson
Planning Committee
on Descriptive Standards