Report: final report data elements

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Background to BCAUL

Why upgrade?

• Multi-level description
• More efficient upload from institutions to BCAUL
• Long-term sustainability

Canadian archival network: context / directions / concerns

• See CCA / LAC Capacity Assessment Study

Findings

Research / data mapping crosswalk

What

Crosswalks establish relationships of equivalence between data elements in two or more standards.

Why

Practical purpose: required when an application built around one standard needs to interact with data structured according to other standards.

• Import: take in data originally structured by a different standard.
• Export: output data in form structured by different standard, typically for use by application built on that standard.
• Design: expand user base of application by adapting it to other descriptive communities (use different standards to describe same or different types of materials).

Import and export involve devising rules for handling data and implementing these as methods or scripts in the application. Design addresses both database architecture (more tables or fields needed?) and user interface (layouts / forms for data entry and presentation).

Which standards

The BCAUL project involved each of these scenarios.

• ICA-AtoM is built around ICA descriptive standards.
• The application needs to be able to import and export data in a number of exchange standards: EAD, MARC21, MODS.
• The software must be adapted to Canadian descriptive standards (RAD) for use by Canadian archivists.

While outside of the scope of the BCAUL project, it should be noted that the underlying software on which ICA-AtoM is based (Qubit) is intended as a metadata toolkit for describing collections of information objects, including archival materials, but also museum artefacts, works of arts, and publications. These other, non-archival types of material may require other descriptive standards and crosswalk work has included Dublin Core