Moving Beyond the Name: Defining Corporate Entities to Support Provenance-Based Access

SUMMARY

The second edition of the International Standard Archival Authority Records for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (ISAAR(CPF)2) focuses on describing entities as they exist in reality, rather than on establishing authorized terms. This change allows authority records to include multiple authorized terms representing an entity as it changed over time. Traditionally, an authority record has been created for a corporate body each time its name changed. This practice results in an artificial, fragmented view of the entity, concentrating on heading control rather than on providing contextual information necessary to assist with the provenance-method of retrieval and the interpretation of the records. In order to describe entities as ISAAR(CPF)2 allows and better reflect records-creating environments, the author proposes that an authority record describe a definable unit that performs a distinct function without major temporal interruption.     

Social Networks and Archival Context: From Project to Cooperative Archival Program

This article highlights the objectives and outcomes of the multi-year Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) research and demonstration project and discusses related developments to establish a large-scale sustainable cooperative for maintaining information about creators of archival collections, leveraging the Encoded Archival Context—Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) standard. The article discusses processes developed to derive EAC-CPF records from existing EAD finding aids, MARCXML records, and original authority records, enrichment of those records from other sources, and the creation of a prototype research resource, providing integrated access to dispersed archival collections and the social-historical context of the collections.