The finding aids seem to create a barrier between the archivist and free access. You used the phrase mediate access. It would seem to me that the point of a finding aid should be to minimize the need for the expert operator. Unfortunately the opposite seems to occur.

In the case of the architecture and design collection, the finding aids don’t take into account the nature of the archives as museum holdings. Rather, they attempt to describe the collections according to architectural traditions which works well, mostly. In a museum setting, where categories, narratives, historical and visual impact are often more important to the curators, these finding aids can actually obscure those qualities. To complicate matters, additional architectural cataloguing will further distance. The material from “regular” users.

A couple years ago we were suggesting this problem could be cured by “natural language” description. Whatever happened to that term?

Alexander J. Hauschild Digital Project Archivist, Museum Scientist Sr.

Debating who or what is a “real archivist” versus an “information peddler” (and implying that Mark is the latter and therefore not the former) seems to me a useless and immature conversation. I’m sure you will agree that our profession is not served by petty infighting or name-calling.

The hope of the archival description peddler then becomes to remove data created by real archivists and upload and rearrange it via new, ever-changing networks. This is excellent and yields some interesting work. But at the level of practice, will be best achieved by actual web / database designers, and not folks a few years out of Library school.

I will argue that most user of archives, find archives through books and humanities research. Usage is the result of critical thinking and bibliographic analysis. These patrons are also working to create new works in the humanities and social science. As mentioned above, description peddlers are rarely seen using archives. Thus, the work of the description peddler is fine and dandy in so far as everyone at the table is a technologist. But they’re achievements are lost on a good number of people who simply want to get to collections which they know to exist. Box 13, so to speak, of a 133 Box collection.

Nothing will change, but there is risk of real archivists erasing their professional standing in the humanities by adopting the philosophy of description peddlers.

Again, as usual, carry on, Thomas

Description is, surely, required in order to enable access. But maybe archivists need to be more aware of the active role that description plays in shaping and influencing access. I’ve recnetly heard that the ICA are probably not going to be reviewing ISAD(G) in any depth. Shame I think.

In your current position of “Applications Developer in the Digital Experience Group of the New York Public Library”…

1) To which archival collections have you added a description?

2) Of those archival collections described, how many researchers working with them have you assisted?

I wonder about these questions because your blog post is about both access and description.

And, again, carry on, Thomas L

Mark, can you please clarify your use of term description in your statement: “Archivists in part provide descriptive, contextual, and structural metadata about collections…”

I am confused as to whether you are referring to archival description performed by archivists working hands-on with a collection in a processing situation.

Or, if you are referring to the computer systems which digest these descriptions, alphabetize them, and make available searches by keyword and subject.

If the former, perhaps you could point to an archival collection you have processed or described. Archival description relies on context, therefore an example of an actual collection could prove useful to direct the dialogue to a practical level, out from which we could again return to the general.

If the latter, could you please describe why the technologist should concern themselves with archives in particular which are, in all senses, described in much further detail by humanists through books, chapters, dissertations and articles. Systems of categorization, finding aids and website sites, present bare essentials and necessarily lack in-depth descriptions found in books, bibliographies and research material published elsewhere.

Otherwise, carry on,

Thanks, Thomas