ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the potential role of the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) in the context of contemporary developments in anthropological research and archival practice. Despite many efforts, there are no discipline-wide, agreed-upon best practices for making or keeping anthropological records, and no central space where such conversations are taking place. Founded in the 1990s, CoPAR aims to convey the value of anthropological records, to encourage anthropology practitioners and institutions to preserve the field's records, to identify and locate primary anthropological materials, and to promote the use of records in the discipline. While CoPAR led efforts to preserve records of anthropologists in the 1990s, it became inactive by the early 2000s. Since then, the shift to digital field records and the increased digital access of archival records has exposed new concerns for the field's archival records. This article explores the outcomes of a 2015 meeting on this topic and identifies new gaps and challenges for anthropological records, joining this work with current archival perspectives. The article makes a case for a revitalized CoPAR that will encourage life-cycle data thinking and more community-driven approaches to archival stewardship.

ABSTRACT

Encoded Archival Description (EAD) was adopted as the first standard for encoding finding aids using archival description in 1998. Since then, rapid changes in technology and archival standards have influenced access, use, and adoption of EAD across a variety of institutions. This article was inspired by an initial survey conducted by one of the authors. The results led to a broader survey and a twenty-year literature review surrounding EAD and online finding aids. The authors developed a twenty-five-question survey to reach a broader audience and delve deeper into the initial questions. The purpose was to answer the following questions: Is there a specific year or time period when a mass adoption of the standard can be identified? What factors influenced whether or not an institution adopted the standard? To what extent has technology influenced the usage of EAD? By surveying archivists across the United States, we gathered their input as to why they did or did not use EAD and how changes in technology and tools influenced their adoption and usage of EAD over the past twenty years. This article explores past trends and predictions, as well as current thoughts by archivists about the past, present, and future of this standard.

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, archival description remained distinct from bibliographic description due to differences in material format, usage, and professional traditions. However, archival descriptive standards and practice have undergone numerous changes in recent years. This evolution is in part due to the advent of MARC and its adoption by the academic archives community. How much influence has the use of MARC and overall bibliographic description had on academic archival description as well as on the collaboration between traditional catalogers and archivists? To address this question, this article presents the findings of a landscape survey of the Association of Research Libraries members' descriptive practices surrounding MARC records, linked and embedded metadata, and authority records. Survey responses indicate that archival descriptive work remains concentrated in the archival domain, with archivists creating description as one component of job responsibilities at most institutions. Descriptive work—including MARC record creation—has not been passed off to cataloging colleagues despite their longer professional experience with the standard even though the OPAC is the most commonly cited archival information system available to respondents. Decisions about appropriate levels of description, standards to be employed, workflows, and other factors related to archival description do not appear to rely on external buy-in or approval in most repositories, and descriptive practices employ a mix of standards from both the archival and bibliographic traditions. These and other findings provide a baseline understanding of current archival descriptive practices and workflows, enhancing our ability to improve archival description and therefore findability and access to archival materials.

EDITOR

Christopher (Cal) Lee (2018–2020), University of North Carolina
Sumayya Ahmed (2019–2023), University College London Qatar
Adriana P. Cuervo (2016–2020), Rutgers University
Caroline Daniels (2017–2021), University of Louisville
Benjamin Goldman (2019–2023), Pennsylvania State University
Katharina Hering (2019–2023), German Historical Institute

Reviews Editor

Bethany Anderson (2015–2021), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Shadrack Katuu (2019–2022), United Nations Mission in South Sudan
Josh Schneider (2016–2020), Stanford University
Heather Soyka (2016–2020), Kent State University
Karen Trivette (2016–2020), Fashion Institute of Technology
Alison Trulock (2017–2021), U.S. House of Representatives

GENERAL INFORMATION

American Archivist