Digital object description and production will the
theme of the 2002 Finding Aids Fair at SAA.
Digital
surrogates are a great benefit to researchers far and near. But describing
digital surrogates is highly problematic because digital objects are
relatively new informational entities and understanding of their descriptive
requirements is not fully developed, because there is uncertainty how digital
objects should interact with other materials, and because digital object
description and production departs from the time honored collection level
descriptive practices of the archivist and manuscript curator.
This year's SAA Finding Aids Fair will highlight
various standards, guidelines, and procedures being developed by diverse
groups for digital object description. It will be viewable in the SAA
exhibits area on Thursday and Friday.
Attendees to the SAA conference are welcome to
contribute to the fair. Of particular interest will be local
documentation about how individual repositories
--adhere to data content and format standards in
their digital object description;
--collect and apply descriptive, administrative,
and structural metadata to digital objects;
--link digital objects to online finding
aids; and
--provide access to digital objects locally.
Please plan on attending the fair in Birmingham and
bring along information to share with your colleagues about how your
repository describes the digital object it produces.
Also, do not hesitate to bring and contribute
to the Finding Aids Fair examples of collection finding aids and descriptive
guidelines that you would like to share with your colleagues. There will
be room for examples that do not contribute to the theme as outlined
above.
Bradley D. Westbrook
OAC / UCAI Project Librarian Geisel Libraries 0175 UCAI UC San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 858-822-0612
858-534-5950 |