A Matter of Trust: Practical Strategies for Writing User-Centered, Values-Driven Description. Issue 3 (24th February 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hintz, Carrie; Quigley, Sarah
• Is Part Of: Journal of archival organization. Volume 17:Issue 3/4(2020)
• Page Start: 209
• Page End: 226
• Publication Date: 2022-02-24
• Subjects: Archival description -- ethics -- finding aids -- transparency -- trust -- user needs; Archives -- Processing -- Periodicals; 025.341
• DOI: 10.1080/15332748.2020.1806615
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1533-2748

Abstract

Abstract: An archives' descriptive practices have a significant impact on researchers' ability to find, use, and understand records. Archivists do not fully utilize the descriptive fields that DACS and other standards provide to explain how and why a collections are acquired and the interventions archivists make in collections. However, this information can be critical to a researcher's analysis. This paper makes a case for archival description that is rooted in values of transparency and accountability, and provides a concrete examples of how one institution rewrote its description policies to codify and formalize transparency and accountability as key drivers of their descriptive program.