Descriptive standards

Supported descriptive standards

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ICA-AtoM is built around the ICA's descriptive standards

While ICA-AtoM is designed around the ICA's international descriptive standards (ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDIAH), it is intended to be flexible enough to accommodate other practices based on other (national or local) descriptive standards.

Support

"Support" means that users of another standard should be able to use ICA-AtoM to produce outputs that are compliant with that standard. This includes the ability to:

• Enter data in fields that represent all of the data elements required by the standard.

• Interact with (view, edit, search) data in ways structured by and labelled according to the terms of the standard.

• Output (print, export) data in formats compliant with the standard.

Design principles

To implement support for other standards:

• Map the data elements of the target standard to the related ICA standard and – via this "metadata crosswalk" – to the underlying database architecture in ICA-AtoM / Qubit.

• Use existing ICA-AtoM fields wherever the crosswalk establishes a direct correlation between elements in the ICA and target standards.

• Create "custom fields" for all other elements in the target standard using ICA-AtoM's property database table (where type= the name of the element and value= the data itself).

• Create additional php methods for managing the data as required.

• Add user interface templates (view and edit screens) using page divisions and field labels based on the structure and terminology of the target standard.

Adding support for another standard requires a system developer working on the underlying software code. Once support has been added, however, ICA-AtoM provides an interface allowing system administrators to easily select their preferred standard and to switch between the various standards.

Other (non-ICA) standards currently supported

Canadian Rules for Archival Description

Users of other descriptive standards should be aware that the User Manual is generally based on the ICA standards for its examples and screenshots. Standard-specific sections are noted below.

Rules for Archival Description (RAD)

• Maintained by the Canadian Council of Archives.
• ICA-AtoM support based on July 2008 edition.
• RAD-specific sections of the user manual are available at UM-3.1.7 Add / edit archival descriptions > RAD elements

Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1

• Unqualified Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1.
• Dublin Core-specific sections of the user manual are available at UM-3.1.5 Add / edit archival descriptions > Dublin Core elements

Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS)

• See Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS).
• Note that currently ICA-AtoM supports the Digital Library Federation second level of adoption for MODS (see DLF Aquifer MODS Guidelines Levels of Adoption).
• MODS-specific sections of the user manual are available at UM-3.1.6 Add / edit archival descriptions > MODS elements.