Notes from the breakout sessions.
- Archival Advantage (OCLC report): advantages to working with archivists with information
- archivists consider the provenance rather than by subject e.g. retaining order
- the stuff that you find is what was made a long the way rather than the final product
- material tend to be unique in context, rather than repeatable material
- meaningful links between creator, activity that created material, why undertake activity, and between related materials
- materials described in aggregations
- finding aids just structure for metadata which includes more provenance info than you would typically have in other types of collections
- fond = stuff you made/got and kept vs. collection that is gathered purposefully
- standard for description, but not structure, but has best practices
- may have different standard e.g. top level fond vs. series
- archives focus on context
- the things an archivist would describe if they were looking at item level (which is rare): context of creation, related persons -> named access points; “docket style” folding, filing information including date
- information is divided to describe the specific level: fond, series, sub-series, etc.
- advantages: issues of custody, ownership, intellectual property, documenting chain of custody for authenticity, copyright/licenses in some circumstances, appraisal (don’t keep everything, don’t digitize everything), context (how/why material was created), thought to significant characteristics of various formats, how to preserve/display them authentically, authenticity (combining integrity and identity), preservation, description and metadata
- things can help with: OAIS compliant workflows, safe movement of files
- records manager: more about when in active lifecycle
- how do you digital collections and archival fonds together?
- could repeat the series metadata to the item
- could improve the metadata
- authorities = something archivists could learn from librarians
- archivescanada recently relaunched
- convergence in some areas e.g. around digital preservation, using linked data