Browse by Chapter

This website was created by Grace Phippard in 2026 as part of a project at the University of British Columbia. The primary objectives of this project are :

1. To make RAD more accessible, easier to navigate, and easier to reference for anyone working with archives;
2. To facilitative discourse about arrangement and descriptive practice;
3. To generate suggestions for the revision of RAD through discussion that is open to everyone

About RAD

The Rules for Archival Description (RAD) is the primary standard for archival description in Canada. The Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) first published RAD in 1990 and revised it in 2008. You can read more about RAD in the introductions to these editions.

Members of a 2024 Standards Committee in the CCA (Greg Bak, Creighton Barrett, Jennifer Douglas, Krista Jamieson, and Karen Suurtamm) published an article in 2025 reflecting on their experiences on the committee. In this article, the authors raised concerns about the lack of support from the CCA in maintaining and revising RAD. The article included the following call to action, which this project attempts to support:

As the Canadian archival community continues to work toward revising or replacing RAD, we believe there are several points to be acknowledged. Before any work begins on revising RAD, drafting a new standard, or adapting an existing standard, clear guiding principles and criteria for assessment must be developed. Canadian archivists need to articulate what a descriptive standard is to do. This requires open conversation among archivists, archival educators, and other scholars to revisit the purpose of descriptive standards, compare models for descriptive standards, and discuss the need (or not) for a distinctly national standard in Canada. We need to explore issues related to colonialism, reparative description, expanded provenance, structured and linked data, user expectations, and many other topics. This process needs to be accountable to the communities archives serve; archival communities deserve to be engaged in consultations, and archivy needs to conduct robust research into the needs of archival users.¹

Navigating this Website

On this website, you can browse RAD by chapter (textual records, graphic materials etc.) or browse by section (archival description area, notes area, etc.). You can also search the website if you don’t know what part of RAD you are looking for.

Each section of RAD has a corresponding comment section, but there are also a number of forums dedicated to specific topics. Please see the below section on commenting for more information on how to comment

Commenting

To comment on this site you will need a GitHub account. To create an account, all you need is an email, username, and password. You can create an account here or follow this tutorial for additional instructions.

When you want to comment, sign-in to Github using your account credentials. When you comment, your GitHub username will be displayed and your account will be connected to any comments you make.

More information about GitHub is included below, but all you need to comment on this website is an account. You do not need to use the GitHub platform or have a robust understanding of how it works to use this site, but guidance is provided for those who are interested.

About GitHub

GitHub is a free and open source online platform that was originally created by the tech community to work on collaborative projects. GitHub uses Git (a version control system) to track changes to projects in detail—including the changes made, the person(s) responsible for those changes, and the reason for those changes.

GitHub is now used outside of the tech community because it is free and offers robust tracking features. The Society of American Archivists (SAA) began using GitHub to host and revise their description standard, Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) in 2016.

You can read more about GitHub here and read their privacy statement here.

The GitHub repository for this project is publicly accessible online. More information about GitHub and a potential framework for revisions to RAD through this site will be added soon.