C C C Cultura Arxius Standards of Archival Description in Catalonia (NODAC) Norma de Descripción Archivística de Cataluña (NODAC) 2007 Àngels Bernal Cercós, Anna Magrinyà Rull and Ramon Planes Albets (ed.) Núria Canyelles Vilar, Emília Capell Garriga, Rafel Ginebra Molins, David Lobato Buil, Pere Puig Ustrell and M. Luz Retuerta Jiménez ISBN 84-393-7446-6 Arxivística i gestió documental Eines Núm. 1 © Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació. Subdirecció General d’Arxius Direcció General del Patrimoni Cultural Subdirecció General d’Arxius Standards of Archival Description in Catalonia Norma de Descripció Arxivística de Catalunya (NODAC) Àngels Bernal Cercós, Anna Magrinyà Rull and Ramon Planes Albets (ed.) Núria Canyelles Vilar, Emília Capell Garriga, Rafel Ginebra Molins, David Lobato Buil, Pere Puig Ustrell and M. Luz Retuerta Jiménez Generalitat de Catalunya Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació Direcció General del Patrimoni Cultural Subdirecció General dʼArxius Contents 3 PREFACE 6 I. THE PROJECT 6 A) THE ORIGINS 8 B) HE OBJECTIVES 10 C) THE PARTICIPANTS 16 II. STANDARDS OF ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION IN CATALONIA 16 A) ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION: OBJECTIVES AND PRINCIPLES 20 B) THE SCOPE OF THE APPLICATION 20 1. THE ARCHIVES AND THE FONDS THAT APPLY TO IT 20 2. THE TYPES OF DOCUMENTS TO WHICH IT HAS TO APPLY 23 C) THE LEVELS OF DESCRIPTION 33 D)THE AREAS AND THE ELEMENTS OF DESCRIPTION 33 1. THE ELEMENTS GROUPED BY AREAS 34 2. OBLIGATORY, RECOMMENDED OR OPTIONAL ELEMENTS 36 3. THE STRUCTURE OF THE ELEMENTS 39 4. REFERENCES TO AUTHORSHIP AND OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES 40 E) THE TWENTY-SIX ELEMENTS OF DESCRIPTION 40 1. IDENTITY STATEMENT AREA 40 1.1. Reference code 45 1.2. Level of description 48 1.3. Title 56 1.4. Date(s) 64 1.5. Volume and medium 74 2. CONTEXT AREA 74 2.1. Name(s) of the producer(s) 79 2.2. History of the producer(s) 85 2.3. Archival history 91 2.4. Admission information 95 3. CONTENT AND STRUCTURE AREA 95 3.1. S cope and content 105 3.2. System of organisation 111 3.3. Information on evaluation, selection and deletion 115 3.4. Additions 119 4. CONDITIONS OF ACCESS AND USE AREA 119 4.1. Access conditions 125 4.2. Reproductions conditions 129 4.3. Document languages and script 135 4.4. Physical characteristics and technical requirements 140 4.5. Output formats 145 5. RELATED DOCUMENTATION AREA 145 5.1. Existence and location of originals 148 5.2. Existence and location of reproductions 152 5.3. Related documentation 158 5.4. Bibliography 162 6. NOTES AREA 162 6.1. Notes 170 7. DESCRIPTION CONTROL AREA 170 7.1. Authorship and date(s) 173 7.2. Sources 176 7.3. Rules and conventions 178 F) GLOSSARY 187 III. REFERENCE MODELS AND DOCUMENTAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION 194 IV.COMPLETE EXAMPLES 195 Municipal fonds: Molins de Rei Town Council 216 Notarial fonds: Notary’s Office of Castelló d’Empúries 223 Institutional fonds: Men’s Prison of Barcelona (Model Prison) 238 Religious fonds: Parrish of Santa Maria de la Pobla de Claramunt 244 Associations fonds: Torredembarra Fishermen’s Guild 254 Corporate fonds: Lluís Bru mosaics workshop 264 Personal fonds: Josep Maria Rabasa Reimat 269 V. INDICES 270 ANALYTICAL INDEX 279 THEMATIC INDEX Preface 3 Preface The first edition of the General International Standard Archival Description ISAD(G) was approved by the International Council on Archives (ICA) in 1993. The Catalan translation was published in 1994 by the Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya and l’Associació d’Arxivers de Catalunya (AAC). The Committee on Descriptive Standards of the ICA/CDS adopted a new edition of ISAD(G) at a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden on the 19-22 September 1999, which was published in 2000 for the XIVth International Congress on Archives in Seville (Spain). The Catalan translation, appearing in 2001, was also published by the Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalun- ya and l’Associació d’Arxivers de Catalunya. In its introduction, ISAD(G) states, “This standard provides general guidance for the preparation of archival descriptions” and suggests that “It is to be used in conjunction with existing national standards or as the basis for the development of national standards”. It also acknowledges, despite outlining general rules for archival description which can be applied inde- pendently of form or the media of archival documents, that, in addition, specific rules or descriptive guidelines have to be applied for certain types of document. Furthermore, while ISAD(G) standards outline twenty-six elements of description, they argue that the structure and content of the information for each element has to be drawn up following natio- nal rules. Thus, it states that the Standards neither define the presentation format nor the manner in which these elements have to appear in guides, inventories, catalogues, indices or other means of description. The ISAD(G) standards, despite being only a general guide, are an important starting point for fur- thering standardization in archival description. In the spirit of this document and with the aim of standardization the Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya and l’Associació d’Arx- ivers de Catalunya commissioned a group of archivists to prepare a national standard for archival descrip- tion at the end of 2001. The Norma de Descripció Arxivística de Catalunya (NODAC) (Standards of Archival Description of Catalonia) is a tool created to expand the ISAD(G) standards to make them compatible with other specific guidelines and to adapt them to the reality of Catalan archives, and is the fruit of the collec- tive experience in descriptive practices accumulated by the Catalan archivists. NODAC will therefo- re become the instrument which Catalan archivists use for the preparation of archival descriptions. The Catalan version of ISAD(G) was used for the development of NODAC, which was continually tested against the official versions of the ICA and the other existing translations. The Standard regulates the contents of archival description by following general and specific rules, by levels of description and by types of documents and by each of the elements of description included within seven areas of descriptive information as outlined in ISAD(G). NODAC, however, is not a descriptive format and, therefore, does not determine the order or form of the presentation of the ele- ments at the time of the creation of the description (entry format) or at the time of communicating them (retrieval format). Neither is it a codific format - as perhaps are MARC (Machine Readable 4 Standards of Archival Description in Catalonia Cataloguing) or EAD (Encoded Archival Description) - and, therefore, does not establish codes or con- ventions for the identification and characterization of descriptive elements or their content allowing computerized interchange or manipulation. The application of NODAC regulates the content of archival descriptions facilitating the interchan- ge of descriptive tools related to its use, tools which apply certain widely discussed guidelines and gather together a succession of all basic concepts and principals of modern archiving which help us to con- sistently understand and shape the elements of description. The Standards allow the description of a fonds and the parts that make it up by descriptive techni- ques at divers levels. The sum of all the hierarchically related descriptions should offer up a reliable representation of the organization, context and the content of the documentation. The Standards expertly handle archival description and represent archival documents in the manner required for their intellectual control and the access to the information they contain. Other aspects of archival treatment or document management which need to be undertaken like classification, sche- duling of conservation, user management, restoration and others should be regulated, as required, by other standards, manuals, policies or institutional practices. To make the navigation and consultation of the rules easier, the Standards include an analytical and a thematic index that summarizes the contents of the rules. The standards also include a glossary of archival terms as defined within the specific context of NODAC. The Standards need to be integrative. Their use must be valid in all the divers archive centres extant in Catalonia, irrespective of the human resources and technology available to them. They have to be applicable in well-resourced as well as less favoured centres, in a manual or an automated environment. While the Standards were being created other descriptive standards and applications created by archi- val communities from other countries using ISAD(G) as their starting point were consulted. In par- ticular the Standards for the Description of Archival Documents (Règles pour la Description des Docu- ments d’Archives), second edition (RDD2) (2004), produced by the Canadian committee of archival description commissioned by the Consiel Canadien des Archives (CCA), pending their approval, were helpful. Although these standards came to our attention while NODAC standards were in an advanced state in the production process, their consultation served to ratify the style in which the Stan- dards were created. It also helped to give direction to the rule numbering process, work that was still waiting to be done, and in the identification of the principles on which the rules were founded. So the ample casuistry surrounding archival description could be taken into account and all the strands of archival practice