DACS REQUIRED ELEMENTS
This DACS element identifies where researchers can find the materials and typically includes the repository's street address.
What is Name and Location of Repository Element (2.2)?
Oliver Wendell Holmes identified this many different operations at different levels in his groundbreaking 1964 article on archival arrangement.
What is 5 (five)?
A preliminary accession record, a standalone MARC 21 record, and a single database entry are all examples of this type of description.
What is single-level description?
This encoding standard arrived in 1995, giving archivists an XML-based format that could express complex archival hierarchies and enable web publication.
What is EAD (Encoded Archival Description)?
According to DACS principles, information at each level of a multi-level description must be relevant only to materials at that specific level, avoiding this error of copying the same information down the hierarchy.
What is repetition (or unnecessary repetition)?
According to DACS, this element must identify the whole-part relationship between levels in a multilevel description, either through internal tracking or explicit statement.
What is Identification of the whole-part relationship?
This archival principle, emphasized by Holmes and Note, means that information common to component parts should be provided where most generally appropriate and not repeated at lower levels unless needed for clarity.
What is inheritance?
According to the readings, collections of this size—containing thousands of items—are often better served by collection and series-level descriptions rather than item-level detail.
What are large collections?
Before the 1980s standards revolution, archivists resisted standardization by arguing that their collections were too unique and this professional quality—their expert judgment—was too important to be constrained by rules.
What is professional judgment (or archival judgment)?
Margot Note recommends using this technique—along with contextual notes—to link descriptions at different levels and help users understand broader context.
What are cross-references?
This is the total number of required DACS elements for single-level minimum description.
What is 10 (ten)?
According to ISAD(G), this is the second level in the traditional four-level descriptive framework, falling between fonds and file.
What is series?
This type of description can begin at any level and must include at least one sublevel, with typical examples being collection inventories or registers.
What is multi-level description?
This 1983 development adapted library cataloging standards for archival materials, allowing archives to create catalog records that could live in library systems and OCLC.
What is MARC-AMC (MARC format for Archival and Manuscripts Control)?
For email archives like the 15,000-email climate activist collection in the discussion assignment, archivists must decide whether to impose this organizational structure or rely solely on chronological arrangement.
What are series (or series organization)?
In multi-level description, this DACS element is only required at subsequent levels if the person or organization responsible differs from higher levels, and can also be accomplished using the Name Segment of the Title Element.
What is Name of Creator(s) Element (2.6)?
Margot Note argues that this factor—whether researchers heavily use a collection due to unique content—should guide whether to provide detailed file or item-level descriptions.
What is research value (or anticipated research value)?
Margot Note identifies this practical constraint—along with staffing limitations—as a major reason why item-level descriptions are unfeasible for most institutions.
What is time (or limited time/resources)?
Susan Davis and Lisa Weber both argue that without standards, archives remained in this state, making it impossible for researchers to discover collections they didn't already know existed.
What is isolated (or invisible)?
In the oral history interview scenario from the discussion assignment, archivists must decide whether each interview is this—a separate standalone unit—or part of one larger collection entity.
What is a separate item (or individual item)?
DACS specifies this many total elements that are useful in creating archival description systems, though not all are required in every description.
What is 25 (twenty-five)?
In Berg's analysis of multi-level description challenges, this term describes the online display problem where lower-level descriptions lose context when viewed separately from their parent descriptions.
What is decontextualization (or loss of inherited context)?
Cory Nimer's 2011 research forum paper addresses this challenge: creating displays that work at a single level while maintaining the ability to reuse metadata across multiple levels.
What is repurposeable metadata (or single-level displays with repurposeable metadata)?
This specialized standard, abbreviated EAC-CPF, provides structure for describing the creators of archives as distinct entities, separating information about people and organizations from information about their records.
What is Encoded Archival Context - Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families?
Gregory Wiedeman's 2019 article argues that traditional finding aids contain these kinds of dangers, particularly regarding hidden biases, harmful language, and structures that privilege certain researcher perspectives over others.
What are historical hazards (or what is problematic historical context/oppressive descriptive practices)?