II. kongres hrvatskih arhivista,
Dubrovnik, 2005.

Björn Lindh
Former Director of Swedish National Archives
Fatburs Kvarngata 1, S-11864 Stockholm, Sweden


ARCHIVAL  STANDARDIZATION  -  TODAY AND TOMORROW

There are a number of standards of interest to the archival society produced during the last ten years. This  paper will describe them and discuss their validity.  It will then look at some other archival areas where standardization could be possible and discuss  advantages and/or disadvantages that may be a consequence.

Keywords: Standard(ization), archives, ISO, ICA  


INTRODUCTION
What is a standard? According to ISO, the International Standardization organization, it is a document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context. This definition may well be difficult to understand but it is supposed to cover all possible kinds of standardization. Most international standards are prepared by ISO. 
Our own international organization, the International Council on Archives, ICA, has also produced standards. As such standards are not produced within the framework of ISO, we normally call them de facto-standards. They are used in the same way as an ISO standard but without the official stamp of ISO. We know the ICA ones as ISAD(G), the international standard Archival description (general) and ISAAR(CPF) and the international standard Archival authority record for corporate bodies, persons and families. These will not be dealt with in this paper but treated by a real expert on the subjects in another paper.
To develop an ISO  standard there is a given procedure. Normally the scope and title of the standard is proposed by a national standardization body, member of ISO. The development of the standard in question is then assigned to a technical committee that in turn assigns the charge to a subcommittee and/or a working group. When drafted it is circulated to national members of the technical committee and eventually approved by a voting procedure and finally published. Unlike the European Union standards an ISO standard is only optional. It has to be further approved in the respective member countries by law etc to become valid.
ISO is structured with a general assembly consisting of all member nations. It has a governing council with a number of principal officers and 18 elected members. A technical management board is responsible for the development activities within the technical committees which in turn are divided into subcommittees and working groups.

The two technical committees that are of special interest to achivists are 
- TC 46  Information and Documentation and
- TC 171  Document Management Applications 

TC 46 and its subcommittees have produced a number of standards of great interest to and use for the archival community. The scope of TC 46 says: Standardization of practices relating to libraries, documentation and information centres, indexing and abstracting services, archives, information science and publishing.
Within TC 46, the only subcommittee actively dealing with archival matters is SC 11, Archives/Records Management. The other important subcommittee of archival interest, SC 10 Physical Keeping of Documents, has unfortunately been cancelled by ISO, officially because of lack of interest from the members (it was difficult to find a secretariat for the SC) but also as it seemed that there was a lack of matters that needed standardization. Another discontinued subcommittee (SC 3) on terminology has produced a vocabulary standards with a certain interest to archivists.
So far TC 171 has not produced any standards in accordance with its scope: Standardization of quality control and integrity maintenance in the field of document management. Documents may be managed in micrographic or electronic form. (Until a few years ago TC 171 was a technical committee for micrographics only).   But work is under way and some results are expected within a year or two.


CURRENT ISO STANDARDS

All ISO standards start in the same way with chapters on 
- the scope of the standard, 
- the normative references and 
- special terms and definitions valid for the standard in question. 

SC 11
We will start with a look at SC 11 and its scope: The establishment of standards for the creation and management of documents, records and archives as evidence of transactions and covering all media including digital multimedia and paper. The main work so far is ISO 15489 Records Management Part 1: General and Part 2: Guidelines.
The proper standard starts with a discussion of the benefits of records management for all kinds of organizations, maintaining that records contain information that is both valuable and important for business activities, accountability and as evidence. After a short notice on the regulatory environment  the standard goes on with a chapter on policy and responsibilities. It is necessary to define and document both a policy for and the responsibilities of the records management of an organization.
The next chapter deals with records management requirements, the principles of  a records management programme and the characteristics of a record: its authenticity, reliability, integrity and useability. Then comes an exposition of the design and implementation of records systems: characteristics, documentation, physical storage, conversion and migration, access and retrieval, retention and disposition, methodology and possible discontinuation of the system.
The processes and controls of records management is the next area of interest. Appraisal, capture, registration, classification, indexing, storage and handling, access and tracking and finally disposition and its documentation are the headings of the chapter. The standard ends with short notices on monitoring, auditing and training.
It was evident from the start of the work on this standard that the result would be a very theoretical creation. There would certainly be a need of guidelines for its use. So part 2 of the standard was established. It follows strictly the main part in respect of the order of chapters but it is more detailed and gives a number of examples of how to handle problematic situations. There are annexes with reference tables to compare the guidelines with the main standard and it leaves room for appendices with examples from the countries that have approved the standard and started to use it.
SC 11 has continued its work on records management processes and last year it produced the beginnings of a new standard on metadata for records. The technical specification produced  deals with principles: the purpose, roles and responsibilities, the relation of  records management metadata to other metadata areas, the management and the types of metadata required to support the records management standard itself.  


SC 10
The still valid standards of the former SC  10 are of a more practical nature. The three oldest ones, dating from 1997 to 2000, concern in turn 

- Archival paper. Requirements for permanence and durability (ISO 11108)
- Paper for documents. Requirements for permanence (ISO 9706) 
- Permanence and durability of writing, printing and copying on paper. Requirements and test methods (ISO 11798) 

They all describe a number of required characteristics: on optical density, lightfastness, water resistance, resistance to wear and heat. Various kinds of testing are also suggested. It should be noted that the standard on Paper for documents (ISO 9706) is adopted by the European union committee for standardization (CEN) as a European standard, and is, consequently, made compulsory for the member states of the European union. One can, of course, in the standards find how to differ between archival paper and  paper for documents, the different means of production etc. 
A standard that maybe just as much or even more was made for libraries rather than archives is the one that deals with Requirements for binding of books, periodicals, serials and other paper documents for archive and library use (ISO 14416) edited in 2003. The standard is applicable to printed or written material that has special requirements for durability and permanence. The binding methods used should relate to the appropriate requirements and one will find in the standard various binding procedure options, a check-list and even some performance tests on binding techniques.
A very important standard, at least in my view, is the one on Document storage requirements for archive and library materials. For the archivist’s use, it deals with archival premises. It has been on a long journey. The work started in the second half of the 1990’s, was discontinued by ISO because of not keeping within the limits of the given time-table (this was mainly due to health problems of the secretary of the subcommittee), when the work was already finished. It was reawakened by the new secretariat of TC 46 (the French standardization organization AFNOR) and finally edited this spring as ISO 11799. It is a functional standard with chapters on building sites, on the construction of archival buildings, on installations and equipment, including fire detection and extinguishing systems, alarms and illumination, ventilation, air quality and room climate. It continues with a chapter on uses, cleaning and disinfection, protection and storage. It ends with three informative annexes on Maximum limits tolerance for air pollutants, on recommended climatic conditions for the long-term storage of archive material and on the contents of a disaster preparedness plan.

SC 3
The final TC 46 standard to be mentioned here is the terminology standard, ISO 5127, Information and Documentation – Vocabulary. It is a standard with a very long story. The work started already in the late 1980’s and was not really finished until 2002. The reason for the very long delay was mainly due to the unusual pedantry and  cautiousness of the subcommittee members, the majority of which remained the same year after year. It took a great deal of self-conquest to finalize the work! As can be seen from the title the standard is not only of use to archivists but to all kinds of professionals dealing with information and documentation matters. The archival terms included correspond to a great extent with the terms which can be found in the ICA terminology, ready for a long time but not yet published on the home page of the organization. This publication has been held out as a prospect for quite some time now but so far nothing has happened. 
What do we know about the usefulness of these standards? Have they normally been adopted in the respective member countries? Do archivists in general follow the lead of these standards? Unfortunately, a lot of the standardization work in the information/documentation area is not very well known by the archivist in general. The contact between the archival society and standardization organizations is often poor and, standards are expensive to buy. It is not allowed to copy standards as the standardization organizations are dependant on the income from the sales. Consequently, archival institutions with restricted budgets refrain from buying standards, and consequently ignore their existence as they are only optional and cannot be forced upon a user without legal methods. Maybe the turning point is coming with the records management standard which has roused a certain interest. The ICA de facto-standard on archival description has been much more successful than the ISO standards, being of more immediate use and also free of cost.


POSSIBLE NEW AREAS OF STANDARDIZATION

Appraisal and scheduling
In this area an international standard could outline the basic issues that must be taken into consideration in any appraisal judgement. It could provide a schematic presentation of best practices and a set of logic steps in the appraisal process and scheduling and, finally serve as a tool for archivists when negociating with records-creating bodies. On the other hand, a standard cannot provide the judgement for the actual decision-making  which really is the most important part of the appraisal process.

Accessioning
A standard in this area could help to ensure that access issues are addressed at the time of receipt of the records and, perhaps, assist archival institutions to address distributed custody relationships in electronic records. This is a small and very limited stage of the archival cycle and it may not be necessary to standardize.

Access review
An international standard on the principles of access could outline the basic issues that must be taken into consideration in any access judgement, serve as a tool for archivists to use when negociating with records-creating bodies, with donors of personal papers, and with in-house legal staff. It could also provide a benchmark for public researchers, who are intensely interested in the possibility of access to records and, possibly, bring public approval for archives. The problems are that judgement cannot be standardized and only very general standards can apply internationally.

Reference service
A standard could help public trust that the profession has a floor under professional practice. Such standardized practices would have important benefits of researcher acceptance of research rules.

Archival laws
Standardization of archival legislation could assist archivists with no legal background and lawyers with no archival background and, also, provide a checklist to help ensure that all elements of archival practice are considered. But it is probably impossible to create a standard that can fit all political systems and be applicable at all levels.


FINAL QUESTIONS
Do we need international standards in the archival field? Or should we leave it to the various countries to develop their own archival rules and practices?
If the answer is yes, we need international standards, should the production of such standards be entrusted to ISO or should we let ICA produce them? It is easy to see from the example of ISAD(G) that an ICA de facto-standard is more likely to reflect a consensus of practice and to be accepted by all than an ISO real standard. The free availability of an ICA standard also makes it easier to use when teaching. 

These are the main questions to be discussed in the archival society today when it comes to standardization. For the moment it is not possible to give a final answer. Time will probably give us the response.