In practice, DACS does not really treat archival description as a continuous intellectual endeavor

[matthewgorham]

Link to relevant DACS principle

e.g. Principle 11. Archival description is a continuous intellectual endeavor.

Describe how DACS does not currently meet this principle

In practice, the rules of DACS treat archival description as a one and done practice, and there should be room in the standard for prompting archivists to iterate or re-describe throughout the lifecycle of a collection and its corresponding descriptive record. This could be accomplished in a number of ways, including the use of specific examples, or perhaps a reframing of the required DACS elements (or a parallel set of requirements?) that indicates which elements should be updated, revised, or added as description is updated or iterated upon.

I expect that this will require a

• [ ] Minor change to DACS
• [X] Major change to DACS

Link(s) to any relevant part(s) of DACS

label

[kbogan]

DACS should reinforce this idea of archival description being a continuous process but the idea of review and revision and the documentation of that review and revision is currently more of an afterthought. Section 5.4 Accruals covers anticipated additions to the materials. Other than that, the main place where these changes can be documented is in Section 7.1 Notes. This note is not a required field and is buried at the end of Part I. Consideration should be given to rethinking DACS with a more active voice in mind.

[faithc]

I think we should also consider recommending user testing for data-based description. Perhaps this could be included in the front matter? Not sure whether this could/should be added as a separate issue.