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

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Publication Title

Journal of Archival Organization

Volume

5

Issue

1-2

First page number:

49

Last page number:

74

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Archival authority records; Authority files (Information retrieval); Cataloging of archival materials; Corporate names; Encoded Archival Context; EAC; Describing Archives\: A Content Standard; DACS; International Standard Archival Authority Record \(Corporate Bodies; Persons; Families\); International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies; Persons; and Families; ISAAR \(CPF\); Name authority records (Information retrieval)

Disciplines

Archival Science | Cataloging and Metadata | Library and Information Science

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.

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