The Architectural Records Roundtable
of the Society of American Archivists
Describing Architectural Records
Architectural records may be accessed a number of ways. Athough access points are generally determined by the needs of the primary audience (architects, museum curators, etc.), a few elements tend to form a minimum level of access for architectural projects: architect, project name, client, date, and geographic location.
The collection of an architect or firm may be arranged using the "Standard Series for Architecture and Landscape Design Records: A Tool for the Arrangement and Description of Archival Collections" by Waverly Lowell and Kelcy Shepherd.
The goal of description is to create a finding aid that provides information on the content and intellectual arrangement of the material in a specific collection. Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is the standard for encoding finding aids and making collection information available online. See the EAD Roundtable of SAA web site for more information about EAD. Additional resources for describing archival records can be found within this site at Cataloging Tools.
Architectural records present many challenges. In "Architectural Records: Managing Design And Construction Records," Waverly Lowell and Tawny Ryan Nelb address the issues that arise when working with architectural records, including description. The manual was published by the Society of American Archivists in 2006.