ARS: Archival descriptions and standards

The idea of standards is that they help is define commonly used terms and information to record.

The most significant standard is ISAD (G), which stands for International Standard for Archival Description General. This is an international standard, and is used outside of the UK. ISAD G established 26 fields, separated into 7 distinct areas.

However, only 6 fields are mandatory at collection level (the level which describes the collection overall). These are title, level, dates, extent, creator, and a reference code. However, you tend to find that other fields such as language and scope and content are commonly used.

Below collection level only title and reference code are mandatory, but I would personally say that restricted items should be noted also.

Another, standard worth talking about here is NCA Rules. NCA stands for National Convention on Archives, and they define a set of riles for naming people, organizations and places. The include rules for what to do when naming someone who was previously married, has a title, or nickname.

This standard is useful, as it reduces the chances that archivists will create access points for the same person but refer to them in totally different ways, albeit this can still happen.

The ARA Page in particular (the final link) offers a long list of standards and protocols that have been used.

Generally, I think the best advice I can give, is that if you want to learn a standard the best way is to implement it as far as possible.