IAMS - Integrated Archives and Manuscript System

Bill Stockting, British Library

UCL, 10th November 2011

Introduction

I will look at:

Background to the IAMS project

The catalogue data model – the entities we are describing

The standards we use to describe these entities and share our data

A look at the developing Search our Catalogue Archives and Manuscripts (SOCAM) public system

Archives and Manuscript Collections

Extensive collections of unique archives and manuscripts managed in separate collection areas:

Manuscripts: Western, Oriental, Literary and Music

Records of East India Company and its successors, and related private papers and manuscripts

Digitised collections from the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP)

British Library Corporate Archive

Fragmentation

Collections managed separately from the Library’s other collections in thematic Studies Areas:

No single inventory and differing cataloguing traditions, practices and standards

Some Catalogues in electronic form but in a number of online systems: Molcat (Western and music manuscripts) on Library website Endangered Archives Programme as web pages on Library website

– not cross searchable East India Company archive and related private papers on A2A

managed by the National Archives! Others only available to users in the reading rooms

Fragmentation

This means that:

Preservation and security cannot be managed to modern standards

Intellectual content can not be managed in developing legal environment

Material cannot be effectively exploited in the digital age as users cannot find what they want and when they do they cannot easily access digital manifestations of digitized and born-digital archives and manuscripts

Workflow and systems do not always meet funders’ demands

IAMS Mission: Integration

To deliver a powerful, flexible integrated cataloguing and resource discovery system that will unite and broaden access to the British Library’s archives and manuscript

collections and will provide standards compliant data for external co-operative projects

IAMS: Bringing it all together

New cataloguing now done in one system to one set of standards

Legacy catalogues being migrated to the same system

Having our catalogue data in one place and in one format will make it easier to share data with:

Internal resource discovery project to provide integrated access to all the Library’s holdings

External projects, gateways and portals of all sorts, nationally and internationally

Service developers and communities of users – open data

IAMS can be used as a cataloguing and access tool for material not held in the Library as part of partnership projects

Richness of Library’s archive and manuscript collections will then be brought to the attention of new audiences, especially when catalogue records linked to digitized or born-digital archives and manuscripts

IAMS Timetable

Modular system development:

July 2009: Cataloguing

October 2010: Resource Discovery – first cut of SOCAM

Autumn 2011 Legacy Data Migration

2011? Standardised Data Exchange

2011? Digital Asset Management

2011? Automated Requesting

IAMS Development Process

Develop an understanding of business needs: statement of requirements

Assessment of these against functionality provided by: Library’s book catalogue (MARC and AACR2 based) Proprietary systems – CALM and ADLIB Open Source systems – US Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon Library developed ‘system’ – Themed Collections

Latter finally chosen as perceived to be the best fit to requirements and value for money

IAMS System and Data Model

Internal development has allowed us to design a system and data model that:

Cater for our business needs:

Not flat Library Management System or ISAD(G) based archival system Deals with material of all dates, calendars and eras Allows quotation of material in any language or script

Take what is best from traditional practice: archives and manuscripts!

Make best use of our legacy data

Take account of others experience of developing and introducing archival cataloguing and collection management systems

Reflect latest developments in modelling and description standards

Enable users to navigate the catalogue as well as search it

Descriptive Entities and Relationships: Model

Archives & Manuscripts

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What are Archives and Manuscripts?

Archives:

the documents organically created, accumulated and/or used by a person or organisation in the course of the conduct of affairs and preserved

because of their continuing value*

archives have, therefore, certain attributes:

by-products, not collected

uniqueness

format independent (documentary, audio visual, electronic)

evidential value

*Describing Archives: A Content Standard, pxi, Society of American Archivists, 2004

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What are Archives and Manuscripts?

Manuscripts:

hand-written documents (but so are many archives)

collected by a library or similar institution and may have lost archival attributes as loss of provenance

Items may also have attributes of an artefact so need to describe more fully physical make-up and illumination etc

Items may also have bibliographic attributes especially creative works such as literary and music manuscripts

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Principles

Moral defence of evidential value in archives by application of the principles of:

Provenance:

archives of a particular creator should be kept together as a whole or respect des fonds

Original order

archives within a fonds should be kept in the creator’s original order no rearrangement into other useful orders such as subject or

chronological

So when cataloguing archives then we describe items in context with each other and also in the contexts of their creation

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Description in context: Hierarchy

Archival descriptions following arrangement in original order are multi-level. There are 3 parts of the archival hierarchy:

Contextual (or ‘collection’): Fonds (and its subs)

Groups of records (‘classification’) Series (and its subs)

Physical documents: File and Item

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Description in context: rules of multi-level description

The nature of multi-level description provides a number of rules or guidelines:

Description from the general to the specific

Information relevant to the level of description

Non-repetition of information

Descriptions should ‘know their place’!

Descriptive Entities and Relationships: Model

Archive Institutions

held by

Persons, Families, Corporate

Bodies

producingFunctions,Activities,

etc

do things

created by

Archives & Manuscripts

Places, Concepts,

Things, Events

have subjects

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Which standards?

The standards we are concerned with today form the basis of the data model found in IAMS:

Structure, e.g. ISAD(G)

Content, e.g. NCA Rules

Communication, e.g. EAD

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Why standards?

Standards are tools that have benefits for us:

enable integration of disparate catalogues across Library

a single system will be easier and cheaper to manage

recruitment easier and gains in productivity

ensure that IAMS is a tool for the support of externally funded projects

future proofed metadata

benchmark provided for comparison with other institutions

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Why standards?

Standards are tools that have benefits for the public:

access to some catalogues for the first time via ‘IAMS Online’

increased access points as data sharing possible within and outside library

easier for users to understand and use as similar to other online archive catalogues

Descriptive Entities and Relationships: Model

Archive Institutions

held by

Persons, Families, Corporate

Bodies

producingFunctions,Activities,

etc

do things

created by

Archives & Manuscripts

Places, Concepts,

Things, Events

have subjects

Descriptive Entities and Relationships: Structure Standards

ISDIAH

held by

ISAAR(CPF)

producing

ISDF

do things

created by

ISAD(G)

Place name/

Subject term

have subjects

IAMS Structure Standards: Archives and Manuscripts

ISAD(G) provides data elements and rules for multi-level description for core archival description

Integration of archival description and manuscript (works) description: TEI v. ISAD(G): Using ISAD(G) as aim is general resource discovery and mindful of

resource implications But have added Uniform Title element and are looking at integration of

more granular manuscript descriptions where really necessary

IAMS Structure Standards: Contextual Entities

ISAAR(CPF) provides the data model for authority controlled records of people, families and organisations

No full ISDF records, but function term and description can be captured as part of the ISAAR(CPF) descriptions

No full ISDIAH records but a superstructure allowing capture of names and brief descriptions of repositories, collection areas, overarching collections and projects

For non exclusively archival entities – places, concepts, things and events Collecting term and a note of the authority for it Places noting place names and relationships as suggested by the NCA

Rules

Descriptive Entities and Relationships: Content Standards

none

held by

NCA Rules

producingUK: IPSV

etc?Aus:

AGIFT

do things

created by

Archives: noneMss:

AMREMM

NCA Rules and UKAT

have subjects

IAMS Content Standards

The following content/format standards are specified in IAMS:

Archives/manuscripts: no national content standard as such, so developed IAMS Cataloguing Guidelines taking into account institutional, national and international practice

NCA Rules specified for the format of person, family, corporate body and place names

UKAT thesaurus as the default for concepts, things and events; other vocabularies used where necessary for specialised material

Library of Congress for uniform titles

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Content Standards: References

AGIFT: Australian Governments' Interactive Functions Thesaurus, http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/create-capture-describe/describe/AGIFT/AGIFT-zip.aspx

AMREMM: Pass, Gregory A, Descriptive Cataloguing of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts, Association of College and Research Libraries (Chicago, 2003)

IPSV: Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary, http://www.esd.org.uk/standards/ipsv/

NCA Rules: Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, National Council on Archives (1997): http://www.ncaonline.org.uk/materials/namingrules.pdf

UKAT: United Kingdom Archival Thesaurus, http://www.ukat.org.uk/

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Descriptive Entities and Relationships: Communication Standards

EAD / TEI (Mss)

EAG

held by

EAC-CPF

producing

EAC-F?

do things

created by

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Communication Standards: References

Encoded Archival Context (EAC-CPF): Official website at http://eac.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/

Encoded Archival Description (EAD): Official website at http://www.loc.gov/ead/

Encoded Archival Guide (EAG): see Desantes, Blanca, The Encoded Archival Guide DTD and the Censo-Guía de los Archivos de España e Iberoamérica Project: An electronic Guide to Spanish and Iberian American Archives, in Bill Stockting and Fabienne Queyroux ed, Encoding Across Frontiers, Haworth Press (2005)

TEI (Mss): See the Manuscript Description module of the Text Encoding Initiative at http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/MS.html

Standards and Resource Discovery

http://searcharchives.bl.uk

Contact

Bill Stockting

S&C Cataloguing Systems and Processing Manager

william.stockting@bl.uk