DACS & DESCRIPTION
This acronym stands for the content standard that governs US archival description.
What is DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard)?
This principle says records from different creators should never be intermingled.
What is respect des fonds (or provenance)?
This federal law protects student education records.
What is FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act)?
This archivist and theorist famously declared that archives cannot be neutral.
Who is Terry Cook?
This widely used archival management system handles accessioning, description, and access in one platform
What is ArchivesSpace?
This DACS element requires you to state how much material is in the collection, usually in linear feet
What is Extent (2.5)?
This principle says records should be kept in the order their creator used.
What is original order?
This federal law governs the privacy of medical and health information.
What is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)?
This scholar introduced Feminist Standpoint Appraisal to archival theory.
Who is Michelle Caswell?
This linked-data vocabulary provides queer-affirming subject headings that complement LCSH
What is the Homosaurus?
This DACS element tells researchers what they can and cannot access, and under what conditions.
What is Conditions Governing Access (4.1)?
These are the five levels of archival hierarchy, from largest to smallest.
What are repository, collection (fonds), series, file, and item?
This federal act creates a presumption of openness for federal records but includes nine exemptions.
What is FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)?
She proposed a framework of cultural humility in archival arrangement and description.
Who is Jessica Tai?
This national name authority cooperative is used for standardized name headings in archival description
What is NACO (Name Authority Cooperative Program)?
This DACS element documents the chain of ownership before the collection reached the repository
What is Custodial History (8.1)?
This processing philosophy, coined in 2005, urges archivists to do less detailed work to address backlogs.
What is MPLP (More Product, Less Process)?
This formal process allows researchers to request review of still-classified records.
What is MDR (Mandatory Declassification Review)?
These two authors proposed colophons for finding aids back in 2002.
Who are Light and Hyry?
This SAA-authored resource kit supports archivists collecting during crisis events.
What is "Documenting in Times of Crisis"?
This data structure standard uses XML to encode finding aids for machine-readable, interoperable exchange.
What is EAD (Encoded Archival Description)?
The two authors who coined MPLP in their influential American Archivist article.
Who are Greene and Meissner?
This Cold War NATO exercise, documented in Nate Jones's work, nearly triggered nuclear war in 1983
What is Able Archer 83?
This feminist philosopher's concept of "situated knowledges" underpins arguments for positionality in description.
Who is Donna Haraway?
This set of anti-racist description resources was created by a Philadelphia-based working group.
What is A4BLiP (Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia) Anti-Racist Description Resources?