Section's Web Site on the Way
The Description Section's web site is under development at Yale University.
Begun by Nicole Bouché, the site will be developed and maintained
by Diana Smith. The site is expected to be ready for public access
by December 1, although it may at that time still be a work in progress.
Not available at the time of publication of this newsletter, the location
of the site will be announced on the Archives & Archivists list.
Suggestions for enhancements to the site will be welcomed. Understanding
is requested in light of the site's developmental status.
Thanks to a generous grant to the Society of American Archivists from the Delmas Foundation, the EAD Working Group met in Washington October 31-November 2 to consider the suggestions for changes to the document type definition that were made on the official EAD listserv (EAD@loc.gov) during June, July, and August, 1997. In addition to modifications to the DTD, the Working Group discussed the EAD documentation, XML compliance, relationship to MARC, and other issues that will make EAD more useful and more accessible to archivists and to our patrons.
The Working Group hopes that the full release of EAD, with a new version of the DTD, will be available before the end of 1997. Publication of the application guidelines for EAD and the EAD tag library is projected for the spring of 1998.
Kris Kiesling
Chair, SAA Committee on Archival Information Exchange
Chair, CAIE EAD Working Group
1998 Program Proposals
As of 10 October 1997, the deadline for submitting session proposals to the 1998 Annual Meeting Program Committee, four proposals had been forwarded to the Description Section for endorsement. The proposals covered a range of topics, from use of SGML, to developments in descriptive standards, integrated online access to archival descriptions, and studies of user reactions to archival descriptions. Many thanks to the people who put these proposals together. More information about the successful proposals will appear in the next newsletter.
Heather Heywood
Statement from Toronto Meeting on AACR
The International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR was held October 23-25, 1997, in Toronto, Canada. A number of actions and recommendations resulted from the Conference and the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR is now charged with the establishment of an action plan to be implemented in conjunction with the Committee of Principals for AACR. Immediately following the Conference, therefore, at its annual meeting, the Joint Steering Committee discussed the results of the Conference. The action items listed below have been identified for immediate implementation and a more complete summary of the Conference results will follow. In addition, the Conference Proceedings will be published jointly by the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association and the Library Association under the editorship of Jean Weihs.
The following action items have been developed by JSC from the priorities identified during the International Conference.
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR
(furnished to Descriptive Notes by Steve Hensen)
Description Section Sponsoring Finding Aid Fair
Plans are in the works for a Finding Aid Fair sponsored by the Description Section at the 1998 SAA Annual Meeting in Orlando. Rita Wallace, Court Historian and Archivist for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, has agreed to head the group organizing the fair.
Since few records exist about previous finding aid fairs, the committee is seeking recollections, pictures and other information on how the fairs were conducted. If you remember any of the former finding aid fairs, please take a few minutes to jot down some notes. Send them to Rita via e-mail at rwallace@ck6.uscourts.gov or regular mail at 371 Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse, Cincinnati, OH 45202-3988, or telephone Rita at (513) 564-7304.
More information about the fair and calls for submissions of finding aids will be sent over the Archives & Archivists listserv and will appear in Archival Outlook. The committee hopes to include in the fair both printed and electronic finding aids and to display the winners of the different finding aid competitions sponsored by other groups within SAA.
News Notes
Native American History at Princeton
Seventy-five years of Native American history are chronicled in an exhibit at Princeton University's Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. "A Voice in the Wilderness: Selections from the Archives of the Association on American Indian Affairs" reveals the influential role this national voluntary organization has played in upholding the rights and promoting the welfare of America's first peoples. The photographs, correspondence, newsletters, and other material on exhibit until February 1, 1998, document the AAIA's multifaceted involvement in the lives of Native Americans.
The material in this exhibition represents only a tiny portion of the Archives of the AAIA, which total 175 linear feet or 432 boxes of records. These were donated to Princeton University in 1971 and supplemented with additional installments in the years which followed. Until now, however, the Archives of the AAIA have been largely inaccessible, due to their unorganized condition. Thanks to a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the support of the John Foster and Janet Avery Dulles Fund, an 18-month project was launched at the end of 1995 to arrange and describe these records.
Project Archivist John S. Weeren and a team of assistants carried out
this challenging task, producing a comprehensive finding aid to the Archives
of the AAIA. This document is available at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript
Library and on the Internet at http://infoshare1.princeton.edu:2003/libraries/
firestone/rbsc/
finding_aids/aaia.html. Researchers can expect to uncover a rich
and largely untapped trove of insights into both the AAIA's internal workings
and external relationships, particularly those involving the hundreds of
Native American communities and organizations with which it has had dealings.
The Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library is located at 65 Olden Street in Princeton. For further information, please call (609) 258-6345.
John Weeren
Stevenson Papers Project at Mudd Library
Adlai E. Stevenson's documentary legacy is now available to researchers
at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library of Princeton University.
Stevenson, who was instrumental in the founding of the United Nations and
served as the United States ambassador to the U.N. from 1961 to 1965, is
known for his courageous role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Running
for governor of Illinois on the Democratic ticket in 1948, Stevenson swept
the state with the largest majority ever recorded at that time, helping
underdog Harry S. Truman to carry the state in the presidential race.
Four years later, Truman rewarded Stevenson by hand-picking him as his
choice for Democratic candidate for President. Though Stevenson was
defeated by Dwight D. Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956, he remained influential
in Democratic politics through the 1950s.
Stevenson's tenure at the United Nations was marked by several international crises, including the Bay of Pigs incident, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the escalation of the war in Vietnam. His papers provide documentation of Stevenson's United Nations activity. The papers also shed light on Stevenson's opinions on the Red Scare, his views on the former Soviet Union, and his relationships with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Stevenson initially gave portions of his papers in 1963 and 1964. His three sons, Adlai E. Stevenson III, Borden Stevenson, and John Fell Stevenson, donated most of the remainder of his papers in 1969; the family conveyed a number of personal letters as part of the recent processing effort. Although the manuscript collection has been open to researchers since the early 1970s, the papers were not fully cataloged until this year. To insure their long-term preservation, the papers have been rehoused in acid-free folders and boxes during a fifteen-month project directed by Susan J. Illis, the Stevenson project archivist. The description of the papers can be accessed via the Mudd Library's homepage at: http://infoshare1.princeton.edu:2003/libraries/firestone/rbsc/finding_aids/stevenson.html.
Susan Illis
High Resolution Texas Maps Now Online
The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) is pleased to announce that high-resolution scanned images from its Map Archive are now available online at the Archives and Information Services Lobby area of the TSLAC web site. The complete list of scanned maps can be found at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/lobby/maps/.
These historic maps have been carefully scanned on a high-resolution drum scanner to a resolution of 250 dots per inch. Although the map images have been digitally manipulated to optimize contrast and readability, no details have been added or reconstructed. For most maps, the image size and color palette have been slightly reduced to minimize the final file size, while maintaining a level of detail necessary to preserve all printed lines and notations.
From a chronological list of available maps, visitors to the site can read complete descriptions and view low-resolution thumbnail images of each map. The high-resolution, compressed JPEG-format images, ranging in size from 1 to 3 megabytes, are available to download for offline viewing.
These scanned images represent only a small fraction of the more than 7,600 maps in the TSLAC Map Archive, which includes original, photoreproduced, and compiled maps covering the period from the early seventeenth through the late twentieth centuries. A searchable database of the entire archive is also available at the web site which enables users to identify specific maps using search criteria such as location, date, or type of map.
Laura Saegert
Robert P. Spindler has been named University Archivist and Head of the
Department of Archives and Manuscripts at Arizona State University ...
Thomas J. Kemp has published Virtual Roots: A Guide to Genealogy
& Local History on the WWW, a tour of the best 1,000 archival/repository
web sites from around the world (http://www.everton.com/oe3-17/vrad.htm),
and Genealogy Annual: A Guide to Published Sources, an annual bibliography
of local history and genealogy books, dissertations, videos, and media,
and the most comprehensive bibliography of its type.
Bentsen Donation to CAH Being Processed
The Center for American History is pleased to announce its acquisition of the papers of former United States Senator and Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. The estimated 3,000 boxes of materials, a gift from Senator Bentsen, make the Bentsen Papers the largest individual archive administered by the Center for American History. Generous financial support from the Houston Endowment, Inc. has enabled the Center to hire special project staff to organize and make the collection accessible. Ms. Elizabeth Switek is project archivist for the 18-month project.
The Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Papers document Bentsen's career in the United States Senate (1971-1992) as well as provide limited documentation of his years in the U.S. House of Representatives (1949-1955) and his years as a businessman in Houston (1955-1971). In addition, the collection thoroughly documents Bentsen's Senate campaigns in 1970, 1976, 1982, and 1988, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to be the Democratic Party nominee for president, and his 1988 campaign as the vice-presidential nominee on the Dukakis ticket. The Bentsen Senate campaign files represent a treasure trove of information on Texas politics during the 1970s and 1980s.
The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, scrapbooks, legislative research files, Federal Election Commission Reports and other campaign records, telephone logs, calendars, photographs, video and audio tapes, memorabilia, and artifacts. The archive also features the lengthy and detailed transcripts of oral history interviews with the Senator in which he discusses significant issues with which he dealt while in public office. The finding aid will include a detailed series outline and description of each series. The existing MARC record will be updated; Web access to the complete finding aid will be available in the future.
The Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Papers form one of the most significant resources in existence reflecting the work of the U.S. Senate in the 1970s and 1980s, and will be useful to researchers in diverse fields for many years to come. The collection is especially valuable for its documentation of the history of energy and trade issues, tax and banking policy, and the shaping of the federal budget.
Elizabeth Switek
Extracts from MARBI Liaison's Report to CAIE
For more detail please refer to the full text of the report by Rutherford W. Witthus, SAA Liaison to MARBI, which will be available on the Description Section's web site. Watch the Archives & Archivists listserv for the site's location.
Representatives of the Canadian and U.S. archival communities met in Toronto on November 1-2, 1996. The issues they discussed were incorporated into MARBI Proposal 97-7 (Coding Leader/06 and Leader/08 for Archival Material), which was presented at the Midwinter meeting of MARBI held on February 16, 1997, in Washington, D.C. The proposal included the following items:
¥ revision of the definition of Leader/08 "Type of Control" to delete language thought not essential to the definition and to allow specific reference to the descriptive rules used
¥ revision of 008 Books to avoid the confusion of archival and other non-book materials being designated "Books" in cataloging work forms and public displays.
It proved impossible to prepare a revised proposal in time for the June annual meeting. However, Proposal 97-3R (Redefinition of code m (Computer file) in Leader/06 in the USMARC Bibliographic Format, revised) was discussed at the annual meeting and was approved with some changes.
Code m (computer file) indicates that the content of the record is for the following classes of electronic resources: computer software (including programs, games, fonts), alphanumeric data, computer-oriented multimedia, and online systems or services. For these classes of materials, if there is a significant aspect that causes it to fall into another Leader/06 category, code for that significant aspect (e.g. vector data that is cartographic is not coded as numeric but as cartographic). Other classes of electronic resources are coded for their most significant aspect (e.g. language material, graphic, cartographic material, sound, music, moving image). In case of doubt or if the most significant aspect cannot be determined, consider the item computer file.
The passage of Proposal 97-3R opened the door for archivists to code
for significant aspects of the materials being cataloged and to remove
the manuscript codes from Leader/06 and put "manuscript" information in
a retrievable area of the record. We must now decide what changes
need to be made to Leader/06 (code t = manuscript language material, code
f = manuscript cartographic material, and code d = manuscript music) in
order to remove these codes from Leader/06 and still allow retrievability
for manuscript music, maps, and single manuscripts. MARBI charged CAIE
to draft another proposal that includes alternatives to the manuscript
codes in Leader/06 and present it to the map, music, and rare book communities
for comment before submission to the Library of Congress. The revised
Proposal 97-7 will be presented to MARBI at its Midwinter meeting in January
1998. Consultation with the music, map, and medieval manuscript communities
will happen this fall.
Many thanks to those who contributed to this issue. Due to limits applied to newsletters by SAA, the next issue will not appear until after July 1, 1998. Please submit items by June 1, 1998, to Hodges@library.uta.edu, or to:
Ann Hodges P.O. Box 19497
The University of Texas at Arlington
University Libraries, Special Collections Division
Arlington, Texas 76019-0497
Fax: (817) 272-3360
Phone: (817) 272-3000, ext. 4963
The EAD tag library and application guidelines can be found at: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/findaids/ead/guidelines/index.html
Further information about EAD is available at:
EAD DTD Home Page: http://lcweb.loc.gov/ead/
EAD Finding Aids Home Page: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/ead/eadhome.html
Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Sites on the Web: http://www.loc.gov/ead/eadsites.html
Information about the Library of Congress Network Development and Standards
Office's EAD listserv: http://gopher.sil.org/sgml/ead-dtdNov20.txt