Archive and Special Collections

Pointing in the right direction

Over the next few months we are attempting to make machine-readable lists of the various collections that have either been recently acquired or already exist in the Library.

Some of the collections consist of books and journals whilst others contain archival material. We are beginning to think about what sort of cataloguing and finding aids we should develop. Clearly some of the material would be better catalogued by the MARC format used by libraries. But others would be served best by using the archive standard ISAD(G), a standard developed by archivists suited to preserving the relationships and hierarchical nature of archival material.

If this parallel approach is taken, we will need to concentrate on developing access points and ‘crosswalking’ strategies to act as bridges between these two standards.

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