II. kongres hrvatskih arhivista,
Dubrovnik, 2005.

Stefano Vitali
Archivio di Stato di Firenze
Italia



INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTIVE STANDARDS: ORIGINS, DEVELOPMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES FOR THE NEXT FUTURE

The paper gives a quick overview of the history of the international descriptive standards development process. It illustrates its outcomes, focusing especially on ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF), presents the goals of the recently established ICA Section on Professional Standards and concludes with some considerations on the circumstances which made successful the work of ICA/CDS, identifying, at the same time, a sort of “international descriptive standards divide” which needs to be overcome in the next future.

Keywords: Descriptive standards, ISAD (G), ISAAR (CPF).


Foreword
In August 2004 the second edition of the International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families has been officially published and presented to the international archival community in a special session of the XV International Congress on Archives held in Vienna¹. This event has represented a crucial turning point in the archival descriptive standards development process, opened up in 1990 with the establishment of the Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards (ICA/DDS) on the initiative of the International Council on Archives and Unesco. The appointment of the ICA/DDS gave birth to a pioneer phase, during which the archival standards land was exploited and the first settlements were set up. The release of ISAAR (CPF) Second edition has closed a second phase of the development of standards, the phase in which the CIA descriptive standards has been definitively and successfully consolidated. 
The opening of a new phase is also confirmed by the proposal, approved in the same Congress, to establish a Section on Professional Standards and Best Practices. The new Section has going to have a broader mandate than the Committee on Descriptive Standards, dealing with standards and best practices in many fields of the archival profession, including appraisal, and electronic records.
While the archival standards development process is going to enter a new road, the time has arrived to weight in balance the achievements of the ICA/DDS and of its successor, the Committee on Descriptive Standards – ICA/CDS. 

Origins  and development of international descriptive standards
The first step in the direction of the development of international archival descriptive standards was the Meeting of Experts on Descriptive Standards held in Ottawa in October 1988, on the initiative of ICA and the National Archives of Canada². The context in which this meeting was organized was characterized by a growing interest in archival description and in descriptive standards in particular, at international level and in some countries of the Western world. The main reason of the resumption of the debate on this important component part of the archival work was due to the diffusion of the Information Technologies in archives during the Eighties and the beginning, in many countries, of various experiments and projects of automation in the field of the management and description of archives. Computers and networks (even before the rapid growth of the Internet) raised the issue of the opportunity of exchanging information and data about archives and of tools which make it possible to gather and share archival descriptions from various institutions at national as well as at international level. As Hugo Stibbe, one of the leader of the descriptive standards development process, has written, while, 

automation demands consistency in approach and procedures in the functions to be automated, (…) as a result of automation studies and systems design, and attempts at implementing such systems for description of archival holdings (…) a general lack of consistency in archival descriptive practices was evident³. 

The requirements for applying IT to archives, either in order to prepare or to exchange archival descriptions, seemed to lead straightly to the question of the feasibility of archival descriptive standards. In the Eighties, this issue was almost completely new in the archival discourse and debate. In fact, until then, it had been a very commonplace among archivists all over the world to think that each fonds had its own arrangement, its own characteristics, each one was the very special product of an unrepeatable historical process. Like the fonds, each finding aid was believed to have very special features, that made it impossible to establish some comparisons between different finding aids describing different fonds. In conclusion, it was generally thought that it was useless to try to develop standards for the description of archives.
Nevertheless, during the Eighties initiatives for establishing common rules and methods for describing archives had been undertaken in some countries. For example in USA - where some archival institutions had started to adopt the MARC format for archives and manuscripts collections (MARC-AMC) for entering information on their holdings into the bibliographic networks such as RLIN and OCLC - a manual had been prepared by Steven Hensen of the Library of Congress, and later on had been adopted by the Society of American Archivists⁴. In 1986 in Great Britain Michael Cook had published the Manual of Archival Description, where he had formalized some general principles which characterize archival description and differentiate it from other cataloguing practices, like the librarians one (for instance the hierarchical structure of finding aids). He had also suggested some practical methods to develop standards in the fields of archival description⁵. Last, but certainly not least, Canadian archivists had already started to develop their own national descriptive standard, the Rules of Archival Description (RAD), which led them to a sort of re-discovery of the principle of provenance and of the concept of fonds as it has been developed in the European archival tradition since the XIX century⁶. 

At the time in which the meeting in Ottawa was held, the kind of initiatives just mentioned, were almost exceptional and the awareness of the importance of archival descriptive standards was not very widespread at international level, as some of the contributions presented at the Ottawa meeting demonstrated. Nevertheless “the meeting came to the unanimous conclusion that there was a need for international archival descriptive standards and passed a number of resolutions asking the ICA to establish a working group”⁷. 
In December 1989 a new meeting was hosted in Paris by UNESCO to discuss and agree on possible further initiatives, which should have been undertaken by ICA. As a result of the meeting, in September 1990 ICA Executive formally established the Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards (ICA/DDS), appointing Christopher J. Kitching of the British Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, as Chairperson, and Hugo LP Stibbe of the National Archives of Canada as Project Director and Secretary. The support of UNESCO made it possible the work of the Commission, while on the basis of an agreement between ICA and the National Archives of Canada, the Secretariat of the Commission was established in Ottawa.
Between 1990 and 1995 the Ad Hoc Commission met six times⁸. After having approved a Statement of Principles Regarding Archival Description, which was discussed at the XIIth International Congress on Archives in September 1992 in Montreal⁹, the Ad Hoc Commission prepared the first general standard for archival description, ISAD (G), which was published in 1994, and the International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families, which was released at its meeting held in Paris in 1995, published in 1996 and presented at the Beijing International Congress on Archives. 
At this Congress a resolution passed to transform the Ad Hoc Commission in a permanent Committee, which became the Committee on Descriptive Standards. Between 1997 and 2000, the Committee met three times¹⁰ and, beyond other minor works, it undertook the revision of ISAD (G), according to the five year revision cycle foreseen when the standard had been approved in 1993. Published in five languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese), the second edition of ISAD (G) was presented at the XIV Seville International Congress on Archives in September 2000¹¹. Renewed, after that Congress¹², the Committee on Descriptive Standards decided to dedicate the activity of the quadrennium 2001-2004 to the revision of ISAAR (CPF), which has been concluded with the release of its second edition at the Vienna International Congress on Archives.


Outcomes and achievements
The activity of the ICA/CDS and of its predecessor have been very fruitful. Along with their major documents (the Statement of Principles Regarding Archival Description and the two editions of ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF)), the two ICA bodies prepared some other products which worth mentioning, such as the Guidelines for the translation of standards of the Committee on Descriptive Standards¹³, the international bibliography on the two standards¹⁴, the Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Finding Aids¹⁵, the comparison between ISAAR (CPF) and the “Essential Data Elements for Internationally Shared Resource Authority Records”, developed by the IFLA Working Group on Minimal Level Authority Records and the ISADN (International Standard Authority Data Number) ¹⁶, a report on a preliminary design model for a standardized tool for encoding archival finding aids¹⁷. All these guidelines, reports and studies are available on the web site of ICA/CDS, hosted by the British National Archives (previously by the British Historical Manuscripts Commission).
Moreover, the members of ICA/CDS have given an important contribution to the dissemination of knowledge and understanding of the descriptive standards, both in their own countries and abroad. They have attended many conferences and seminars, given talks and presentations. During plenary sessions of CDS, meetings and conferences used to be held where descriptive standards were discussed with archivists from the hosting institutions and from other institutions of the hosting country and sometimes from other countries as well. It is also to be mentioned that some of the CDS members have taken part in the development of other archival descriptive standards and exchange formats such as Encoded Archival Description and Encoded Archival Context. In particular, EAC (a XML DTD for describing the creators of archives and records) has been developed in parallel with the ISAAR (CPF) and many of the CDS members have been involved, with different roles, in the project¹⁸.
If ten or fifteen years ago, descriptive standards were a minor importance issue, they are now at the top of the archival agenda. In the last decade ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) have grown up in popularity. There is much evidence of that. Both ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) have been translated in many languages. The bibliography published in the occasion of the Seville ICA Congress listed, beyond the official versions in English and French, about 40 national editions in 18 languages of the Statement of principles, ISAD (G) first edition and ISAAR (CPF) first edition. At the moment the number of the translations of the second edition of ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) is unknown, but it is possible to download some of these translations from the CDS website or from the ICA website. ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) are at the top of list of the most accessed, consulted and downloaded documents on ICA website with thousands hits per months. 

A very updated way to test the popularity of whatever you wish is nowadays to count how many pages you can retrieve by a search engine like Google. Well, there are about 110000 web pages, in many languages, which mention ISAD (G) and 60000 pages which contain references to ISAAR (CFP).
ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) are well known not only in the archival domain but also in other professional communities. For librarians, museum curators, or IT people, as well as for individuals working in other domains the two companion standards have become reference points to know and understand the fundamental principles on which the archival description is based. Outside the archival domain, they probably gained more popularity than archival journals and manuals in recent and less recent past. Actually, the ways through which ideas circulate in present times are very different from that used in the past. Standards and guidelines, instead of heavy manuals and thoughtful essays are often the “tools” by which principles and methods, otherwise unknown, can became familiar to many peoples.

ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF): Why they are so important
What do archivists and members of other professional communities really find in ISAD (G) and in ISAAR (CPF) which made them so important and useful for them? First of all, they find a sort of representation model of archival entities which can be adopted for building archival descriptive systems. A model which combines, in fruitful and creative ways, the respect of some fundamental principles of the traditional archival theory (such as the principle of provenance and the principle of the respect of fonds) with an innovative approach. The most important features of this model are the multilevel description rules and the separate but linked description of archives and creators. 
The multilevel description rules represent a functional reformulation of some very well known archival principles, in particular of the fact that archival fonds have a complex and meaningful arrangement which has to be represented in archival finding aids. Each fonds has its own structure that can be articulated at least in two levels (fonds and items) and very often in three or more levels, that is subfonds, series, subseries and so on. It does mean that, as it is well known, the archival description proceeds from general to specific, from fonds to files and documents. And it does mean all the same that lower levels (for example files) inherit the information given at the respective higher levels (for example at the series level).
The multilevel description rules give some guidelines on the way in which fonds and their parts can be combined in a consistent hierarchical structure of levels within which each archival entity should be always described and retrieved. The rules are the following: description from the general to the specific, information relevant to the level of description, linking of descriptions, non-repetition of information. 
Moreover, ISAD (G) identifies and defines twenty-six (26) elements that may be combined to constitute the description of an archival entity, irrespective of the form or medium of the archival material. The 26 elements are organised into seven areas of descriptive information (Identity Statement Area; Context Area; Content and Structure Area; Condition of Access and Use Area; Allied Materials Area; Note Area; Description Control Area). Not every descriptive element is to be used for the description of every entity. Each description may have its own requirements depending on the archival material characteristic, the descriptive system and so on. Nevertheless ISAD (G) identifies six elements which are considered essential for international exchange of descriptive information (reference code; title; name of creator; date(s); extent of the unit of description; level of description). ISAD (G) should be always used in conjunction with the other descriptive standard developed by CDS, ISAAR (CPF).
ISAAR (CPF) has introduced in archival descriptive practice the separate and linked description of archives and creators along with the authority control of creators, which permit to make a smart use of such technologies as relational DBMSs and hypertextual linkages, in order to manage the many-to-many relationships between fonds and creators, typical both of the contemporary record keeping systems, reflecting the flexible and rapidly changing structures of the contemporary administrations, and of the complex archival transmission processes over the past centuries, which, at a closer examination, appear very often less linear than the traditional archival theory had in the past envisaged. In the course of those processes it often occurred that archives were either divided or assembled, scattered or merged one into the other, because of political-institutional and bureaucratic-administrative reorganisation, or, sometimes, archival arrangements and rearrangements inspired by cultural influences and purposes. As an ordinary result of such events, it happens very frequently that records and series created by a number of creating agencies can be found just in one fonds or, conversely, the records and series originated by one creating agency are dispersed over a number of fonds.
Separate but linked description of creators and archives, envisaged by ISAAR (CPF), gives the opportunity to deal very effectively with such complex and multidimensional relationships. The creators, described autonomously in apposite authority files, can be related to series and set of records they really created, independently from the fonds which those series and records belong to and from the level in the fonds hierarchy where they can be found. At the same time, creators authority files can be shared amongst archival institutions (and, possibly, other institutions like libraries and/or museums) which might keep records created by the same creator, improving so communication and exchange of archival information at local, national and international level. 
ISAAR (CPF) provides guidance for establishing the authority control of the names of creators. It does not define any specific rule for the creation of the “authorised form(s) of names”, but simply refers to national or international rules or conventions, foreseeing that national agencies will adopt already existing rules or will develop new ones. Multiple authorised forms of the name for the same entity are permitted in order to deal with changes of names of the same entity over the time. Moreover, ISAAR (CPF) lists and defines a set of information elements (such as structure, functions and history or biography, an so on) for describing the context of records creation. 
The second edition of the standard has focused much more than the first one on the rules for establishing relationships between creators authority records. In fact, while in the first edition, relationships were managed mainly as relationships among authority entries (that is headings), by “see” and “see also”references, in the second edition there is a special area (Area 5.3) whose purpose is to represent the actual relationships of a given creator with other corporate bodies, persons, families, using relevant description elements (Names/Identifiers of related corporate bodies, persons or families; Category of relationship (hierarchical, temporal, family, associative); Description of relationship; Dates of the relationship). 
However, the major novelty of the second edition of ISAAR (CPF) is probably the strong attention paid to the problems of the interoperability across systems and domains. Sharing and/or exchanging authority records is a very efficient way to navigate between systems and to allow for retrieval of meaningful information across domains. ISAAR (CPF) suggests various means to achieve that goal: for example, including in archival authority records “Standardized forms of name according to other rules”, such as bibliographic cataloguing rules, “can facilitate the sharing of authority records between different professional communities”, as the element 5.1.4 of ISAAR (CPF) states. In addition, the chapter 6 of the new edition provides guidance on how linkages between authority record and relevant information resources can be established. It corroborates the model of separate and linked description for creators and archival material within an archival descriptive system and suggests as well how to link archival authority records to other information resources related to them, which can be found in libraries catalogues, museums descriptive systems or in Web sites accessible through the Internet.
The development of ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) and its implementation in a larger and larger number of archive descriptive systems all over the words confirm that archivists have understood very well that the new technologies can but greatly change many features of archival descriptions. Creating archival descriptions in a digital environment and communicating them through the Internet is not the same as doing it on paper. In this case too, as in other cases, the medium greatly influences structures and contents of information and leads to reassess the forms of organizing knowledge and the ways to acquire it. 

Entering a new road: the development of national standards and the Section on Professional
Standards and Best Practices
The development of ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) has undoubtedly been a very important achievement for the international archival community. Thanks to the two companion standards, archivists all over the world can share a common view of the archival description, whose implementation in archival descriptive systems represents the basic ground for building a conceptual and logical interoperability between such systems and exchanging and/or sharing archival descriptions and authority data. Moreover, ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) appear to be also a sort of “quality requirements declaration” for the preparation of finding aids and the dissemination of information on archives. The conceptual model envisaged, the elements of descriptions listed, the mandatory elements prescribed can be regarded as bench-marks with which the products of archival description can be compared. 
Nevertheless ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) are just first steps in the right direction, which should be followed by other initiatives. Standards are prepared for providing the members of a community with tools for reaching common goals and for getting similar and/or comparable practical outcomes. International standards by themselves are not enough to achieve those goals. They should be used in association and in accordance with archival national standards. Both ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF), second edition, emphasise very strongly this requirement.
The first paragraph of the ISAD (G) Introduction states: 

This standard provides general guidance for the preparation of archival descriptions. It is to be used in conjunction with existing national standards or as the basis for the development of national standards¹⁹.

ISAAR (CFP) includes a similar statement:

This standard is intended to support the sharing of archival authority records by promoting the preparation of consistent, appropriate and self-explanatory descriptions of corporate bodies, persons and families that create records. It is intended to be used in conjunction with existing national standards or as the basis for the development of national standards²⁰.

Moreover, references to national rules or conventions are made in the most descriptive elements both in ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF). The reasons and the implications of those statements should appear manifest. The international standards, by their nature, are so general and abstract, that they cannot cover the whole spectrum of the specific requirements which may be necessary for standardising archival description at national level. By calling for the development of national archival descriptive standards, ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF), from one hand, acknowledge the fact that each national archival community has its own traditions and practices that cannot be suddenly abolished and, from the other hand, claim those traditions and practices should be reconciled and made compliant with the international standards.
The awareness of the importance of national descriptive standards and common rules is growing amongst archivists over the world. As I have recalled above, some archival communities, such as in particular the North American ones, have entered this road some years ago and they are reviewing and updating their national standards on more or less regular basis. Other communities have started or are just starting to develop their own national standards, while some others maintain their “old” rules for preparing archival finding aids. Those rules are very often developed and disseminated by national or regional archival authorities and sometimes are being and sometimes should be improved and updated in the light of ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF). 

But descriptive standards are not the only ones archivists need. To support the exchange and/or the sharing of archival descriptions and authority data and the interoperability between systems and applications, communication formats are also necessary. While “official” communication standards endorsed by formal bodies (such as ICA or ISO) are missing, Encode Archival Description (EAD) and Encode Archival Context (EAC) seem to have gained a large popularity in many American and European countries to be considered de facto communication and data exchange standards for the archival domain. One of the reason of the large popularity of EAD and EAC is the fact that they have been developed as SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) DTDs and schemas, which are generally recognized as the technical tools to support the interoperability between systems and applications. EAD was developed in the 90s as a tool for publishing archival finding aids on the Web. Its first version was released in 1998 as the result of a project - the so called Berkeley Finding Aids Project - initially carried out autonomously by a group of American archivists, leaded by Daniel Pitti. Disseminated and maintained later on thanks to the Society on American Archivists and the Library of Congress, EAD has acquired a more international dimension, in occasion of the review process to which its first version was submitted, in 2002, also in order to make it more compliant with the second edition of ISAD (CPF)²¹. Like EAD, also the Encoded Archival Context, has been developed in 2001-2004 thanks to an independent initiative supported by an American foundation. But, unlike EAD, a group of archivists from Europe and Australia has actively participated, from the beginning, in the EAC development process, carried out in 2001-2004 in close connection with the ISAAR (CPF) revision process²². What will be the agency responsible for the maintenance of EAC, after the its final release, is not, at the present, definitively cleared up, even if some European national archives have manifested some interest in that. It is not clear as well whether the recently established ICA Section on Professional Standards and Best Practices (SPS) can became in the next future the “home” for such standards as EAD, EAC and similar ones.
As I already reminded, the new section has been set up at the 2004 ICA Congress in Vienna with a broader range of tasks than the former Committee on Descriptive Standard. The activity of the Section should be focused more on the coordination of standards development process rather than on the actual standards development. As it stated in a document drafted at the first meeting of its provisional Bureau in Bern last May,

the goals of ICA/SPS are:

• to coordinate the development and adoption of standards, guidelines, recommended practices, codes, rules, and other forms of
• to manage the process by which standards and best practices for archival work are formally adopted by ICA
• to encourage projects by which new standards are developed and existing ones reviewed and updated as necessary
• to facilitate training and exchange of professional experience between different archival traditions
• to promote the knowledge and application of standards and best archival practices
• to liaise with other information profession associations such as IFLA ARMA, ICOM, and with international standards bodies²³. 

Any ICA member or member of an ICA member institution should be eligible for membership in ICA/SPS. SPS members will have the right to vote. The actual work of standards development should be done by working groups appointed by the SPS Bureau. The priority areas of activity of those working groups should be: archival description, appraisal, preservation and electronic records. At the moment just a few projects related to appraisal and archival description have been identified. The appraisal working group is going to keep on the work already started by the former ICA Committee on appraisal and in particular the regular updating of the international bibliography on appraisal, the drafting of guidelines on appraisal and a study on appraisal and preservation of personal files. As far as archival description is concerned, two major projects have been proposed and two working groups established. The first proposal concerns the development of an international standard for describing functions and activities of corporate bodies as records creators. The working group will identify, collect and assess the current models for describing functions, to provide the basis of best practice in a first draft of the new international standard, which will be submitted to the international archival community for comments and proposals of amendment. The final result should be a published professional standard which might serve as a basis for an ulterior development of XML DTDs. A second proposal aims to develop a new standard for the description of archival institutions, including some rules for building an international identity code. Many countries already have developed their models and rules for the descriptions of such institutions, which will be evaluated as a basis for the new international standard to be quickly developed²⁴.
The intent which has inspired the launch of the new Section is very ambitious, even if it is too early to figure out whether the idea of the ICA headquarters to concentrate in a single body all the work for the development of archival professional standards will really succeed. The problems of financial support for the Bureau meetings and the working group activity are not yet cleared up. Moreover, developing standards which have to be applied by archivists all over the world is not only a technical task. It is also a political commitment which implies to build large consensus and to gain reliability and authoritativeness towards the international archival community. The new Section should be very aware of that, learning from the rich and successful experience of the Committee on Descriptive Standards, but also from the difficulties and the problems it occurred to come across.

Archival descriptive standards and international cooperation
The main reason of the success of the work of DDS and CDS is to be found in their efforts to constructively overcome the difficulties arising from the different archival traditions they came from and to establish fruitful and positive relationships with the archival international community. As its well known, each archival tradition has its own view and methodology of archival description. Archival concepts are difficult to translate not just from one language to another one, but from one archival tradition to a different one. Similar words have different meanings. “Series” in French has not the same meaning as “serie” in Italian or ”series” (class) in English. Document is not the same of “documento” in Italian, not to say of German “Akten” and “Urkunden”. The word “record” has no equivalent in the Neo-Latin languages. The same difficult comparison occurs with the typology of findings aids. All that, to say that, in such circumstances, it was not really easy to try to reach an agreement even on general principles of archival description. Actually, the development of archival descriptive standards was possible only because, inside DDS as well as inside the CDS, there have always been a reciprocal acknowledgement and respect of every members’ ideas and opinions. Thanks to continuing debates and efforts for better understanding other members’ way of thinking, agreements and compromises have been reached which could satisfy everyone. The members of DDS and CDS have always been fully aware of the fact that, without the firm and convinced consensus of everyone involved, the standards development process would have been unsuccessful. All the Chairs and Project directors of the Ad hoc Commission and CDS have always managed to establish a friendly climate which was propitious to reach such a consensus. 

A similar attitude has been kept towards the international archival community. DDS and CDS have always searched for the maximum consensus of the international archival community on the standards developed. All the documents prepared by DDS and CDS  - from the first draft of the Statements on Principle Regarding Archival Description to the draft of the second edition of ISAAR (CPF) - have been asked to be discussed and commented by institutional members of CIA as well as by individual archivists. Proposals for amendments and improvements of the two standards in the occasion of their revision process have been very welcome, appreciated, broadly discussed and taken into high consideration by the CDS in redrafting the standards.
A further example may well illustrate such strategy of consensus building. When the Statement of Principles and the first draft of ISAD (G) were severely opposed in the open session held at the International Congress on Archives in Montreal in 1992, the DDS decided to add to the Commission a new member from Australia who could represent the divergent views. It was a very wise decision, not only because a very important archival community as the Australian one was directly involved in the standard development process, but also because the idea of preparing a standard for the authority control of creators originated just from the debate with those divergent opinions.

Archival descriptive standards in a globalized world
The search for feedback and consensus has been one of the keys to the success of ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF). As a consequence of the consultations promoted by DDS and CDS during the standards development or revision processes, every archival community and tradition involved has been able to recognize the specific contribution they gave to the standards. Being the result of a convergence of many archival traditions, the standards can be seen belonging to all archival cultures which contributed to their development. 
Said that an interesting issue could be raised, which could be split in two separate but connected questions. Are the archival traditions involved in the development of the international archival descriptive standards really representatives of all the national archival cultures? Although their international character, do ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) really reflect the totality of the archival traditions of the world?
Some empirical facts and data can help to answer those questions. Between the 34 members who seated in the Ad Hoc Commission or in Committee on Descriptive Standards (see the list in Appendix), only two came from Asia (China and Malaysia), one from South America (Brazil) and two from Central America (Mexico). Nobody came from Africa. The large majority came from Australia (4), North America (7 from Canada and USA) and Europe (18 members). The countries which mainly took part in the discussion for the ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) revision process sending comments and proposals of amendments, have, more or less, a similar geographical location. Amongst the 30 documents from 23 countries sent to the CDS Secretary in 1998 for the ISAD (G) revision, one came from Asia, two from Africa, two from Australia, two from South America, one from Central America, four from North America, the rest (18) from Europe. The comments to the ISAAR (CPF) exposure draft received by the CDS in the Summer 2003 were 28 from 18 countries: three documents arrived from South America, three from Australia, four from North America, 16 from nine European countries.
To be short, the development of archival descriptive standards appears to be mainly an European-Australian-North American than a really whole world affair. 
Looking closer at these data some other considerations could be made. If Europe have been well represented in DDS and in CDS and many comments for the ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) revision process came from Europe as well, the European countries which took a full part in the standard development process are only a few (Spain, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, Portugal, Italy). No Eastern European country seated in one of the two ICA bodies. A few Central or Eastern European countries submitted comments for the revision of ISAD (G) (Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Ukraine) and ISAAR (CPF) (Hungary, Latvia, Poland). Only recently a German representative entered ICA/CDS. It seems that in these countries ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) are not so popular as elsewhere in Europe.
It would be worth investigating the reason of this sort of “archival descriptive standard divide” which goes across Europe and separates some Western countries from Asia, Africa and (in part) from South America. This “divide” seems to match, more or less, other more significant economic and/or technical gaps; but, as I have noticed above, the splitting line does not exactly follows such “divides”. Probably a more intensive work of dissemination of the standards would let archivist from different traditions and cultures better know and understand nature, principles and concepts of the two associate standards. This kind of dissemination work should be, at the same time, a work of translation - not only (or not necessary) linguistic translation but also a translation from a system of archival principles and concepts to the different system envisaged in the standards. How useful the effort may be of clearly presenting the international descriptive standards to archivists of countries initially not very involved in the development of descriptive standards is well demonstrated by the experience of South America, where after the dissemination and training initiatives carried out by Latin American Archival Association (ALA), thanks to the assistance and help of the Spanish archivists, ISAD (G) and ISAAR (CPF) have became more known, understood and applied.
Anyway, beyond the scarcity of dissemination and training in archival descriptive standards in many parts of the world, I suspect that there are some more profound reasons at the origin of what I have called the “archival descriptive standards divide”, something which is closely related to the difficulty – typical of our age - of establishing a right balance between global requirements and local traditions and cultures.
Developing descriptive standards is nowadays an absolutely vital achievement for both national and international archival communities because the standards are the basis on which a better way of communication with users on a global scale can be built. The standards development should be a process by which archivists from different cultures and traditions can acquire a better reciprocal knowledge and settle a common ground. This process should not necessary imply the prevalence of one (or a few) tradition and culture over the other ones
It is not simple to suggest how such a goal can be definitely reached, but it is sure that an open and transparent debate and a continuous search for the widest consensus may be helpful. This is the most important lesson which the experience of DDS and CDS teaches, regardless of the inadequacies and imperfections that may be found in their work and achievements. A lesson which should be rapidly learned if the archival international collaboration has to be improved in the next years to respond to the requirements of an ever more globalized world.

APPENDIX

Members of the Ad Hoc Commission and its successor, the Committee on Descriptive Standards and years in which they served.

Victoria Arias (Spain)
1996-1998

Ghislain Brunel (France)
1990-1991

Nils Brubach (Germany)
2000-2004

Elisa Carolina de Santos Canalejo (Spain)
1998-2000

Herman Coppens (Belgium)
2000-2004

Michael Cook (UK)
1990-1994

Adrian Cunningham (Australia) Project Director and Secretary (2002-2004)
1998-2000

Blanca Desantes Fernandez (Spain)
2004-2004

Jan Dahlin (Sweden)
1990-2000

Wendy Duff (Canada)
1990-1994

Vitor Manoel Marques da Fonseca (Brazil)
1996-2000

Michael Fox (USA)
1996-2000

Ana Franqueira (Portugal)
1990-2000

Bruno Galland (France)
1996-2000

Pedro Gonzales (Spain)
1990-1992

Kent Haworth (Canada) Project Director and Secretary (2002-2002)
1996-2000

Juan Manuel Herrera (Mexico)
2002-2003

Chris Hurley (Australia)
1992-1994

Ma Jinghua (China)
1996-2000

Christopher Kitching (UK) Chair (1990-1994)
1990-1994

Gavan McCarthy (Australia)
2002-2004

Christine Nougaret, (France) Chair (1994-2000)
1992-2000

Per-Gunnar Ottosson (Sweden)
2000-2004

Dagmar Parer (Australia)
1996-1998

Christine Petillat (France)
1991-1992

Lydia Reid (USA)
1998-2000

Dick Sargent (UK)
2000-2004

Calire Sibille (France)
2003-2004

Hugo Stibbe (Canada) Project Director and Secretary (1990-2000, 2002)
1990-2000

Sharon G. Thibodeau (USA)
1990-1996

Yolia Tortolero (Mexico)
2003-2004

Stefano Vitali (Italy) Chair (2000-2004)
1996-2000

Debra Wall (USA)
1996-1998

Habibah Zon Yahaya (Malaysia)
1990-1994



¹ International Council on Archives-Committee on Descriptive Standards, ISAAR (CPF): International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families, Second edition adopted by the Committee on Descriptive Standards, Canberra, Australia, 27-30 October 2003, Paris, International Council on Archives, 2004. The second edition of ISAAR (CPF) can be accessed and downloaded on the website of the International Council on Archives, , where, besides the official version in English, the translations in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Welsh can be found. The new edition of the standard was presented and discussed in one of the Congress parallel session (Harnessing the Power of Provenance in Archival Description: The Second Edition of the International Standard Archival Authority Record (ISAAR-CPF)): more details on the website of the Congress, .

² For a brief history of the international descriptive standards development process see “History of ICA/CDS” by Hugo Stibbe, in the website of ICA/CDS hosted by the Nation Archives of United Kingdom, . The proceedings of the Ottawa meeting were published as Toward International Descriptive Standards: Papers presented at the ICA Invitational Meeting of Experts on Descriptive Standards, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa 4-7 October 1988, München - New Providence - London – Paris, Saur, 1993. 
³ See “History of ICA/CDS” by H. Stibbe.
⁴ Steven L. Hensen, Archives Personal Papers and Manuscripts: A Cataloging Manual for Archival Repositories, Historical Societies, and Manuscript Libraries, 2nd Edition, Chicago, Society of American Archivists, 1989 
⁵ M.Cook, K.Grant, Manua1 of archival description, London, Society of Archivists, 1986; M. Cook, M.Procter, Manual of archival description, Aldershot: Gower 1989 (2nd ed.) and 2000 (3rd. Edition)

⁶ Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Toward Descriptive Standards: Report and Recommendations of the Canadian Working Group on Archival Descriptive Standards, Ottawa, Bureau of Canadian Archivists, 1985; Bureau of Canadian Archivists. The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice, Ottawa, Bureau of Canadian Archivists, 1992. 
⁷ See “History of ICA/CDS” by H. Stibbe.
⁸ The meetings were held in Höhr-Grenzhausen, near Koblenz (October 1990); Madrid (January 1992); Stockholm (January 1993); Liverpool (November 1993); The Hague (October 1994) and Paris (November 1995). The Ad Hoc Commission organized also public sessions at the XII and XIII International Congresses on Archives in Montreal (September 1992) and in Beijing  (1996).
⁹ The Statement was not officially published, even if it was published in archival journals in many countries. Some of its paragraphs were included in the Introduction of the second editions of ISAD (G). 
¹⁰ The meeting were held in Florence (November 1997), The Hague (October 1998); Stockholm (September 1999). ICA/CDS organized also a public sessions at the XIV International Congress on Archives in Seville (September 2000) Chair of ICA/CDS was appointed Christine Nougaret, from France, and Hugo Stibbe was confirmed Secretary and Project Director.
¹¹ International Council on Archives-Committee on Descriptive Standards, ISAD (G): General International Standard Archival Description, Second edition adopted by the Committee on Descriptive Standards, Stockholm, Sweden, 19-22 September 1999, Ottawa, International Council on Archives, 2000.
¹² Stefano Vitali was appointed Chair of CDS for the quadrennium 2000-2004, Kent Haworth was appointed Secretary and Project director. Unfortunately Kent got a very severe illness in 2001, so that Hugo Stibbe became interim Secretary and Project Director for 2002. The death of Kent, early in 2003 and the sudden loss of Hugo some months later has been a sad and shocking event which stroke all the Committee members. All the international archival community, especially archivists involved in the standard development process miss Hugo e Kent very much. Adrian Cunningham served as Secretary and Project Director between 2002 and 2004.
¹³ It has been drafted by Hugo Stibbe in 1995 and reviewed many times, the last one in 2000. It is available on the ICA/CDS website,  
¹⁴ The Bibliography, Paris, International Council on Archives, 2000 (also Madrid, Ministerio de educación, Dirección general del libro archivos y bibliotecas, Subdirección general de los archivos estatales, 2000) was compiled by Christine Nougaret, in cooperation with the members of ICA/CDS and other archivists from various national archival administrations all over the world. It includes references to the translations of the two standards and citations of articles which mention ISAD(G) or ISAAR(CPF).
¹⁵ The Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Finding Aids, were prepared by the Sub-committee on Finding Aids appointed in 1997 and definitely approved by the CDS in 2001. The document can be accessed on the ICA/CDS website, .
¹⁶ The comparison between structure and features of the authority record standards developed by ICA and IFLA was prepared in 1998 by Dagmar Parer (with Adrian Cunningham) and Michael Fox. It is available on ICA/CDS website,  
¹⁷ See the Report of the Ad Hoc Committee for Development of a Standardized Tool for Encoding Archival Finding Aids (Bruxelles, 2001), better known as OSARIS (Open Source Archival Resource Information System) Project, at . The work was supported by UNESCO.
¹⁸ See below for further details.

¹⁹ ISAD (G), 2nd edition, I.1, p.1.
²⁰ ISAAR (CPF), 2nd edition, 1.7, p. 7.

²¹ A short history of EAD can be read in “Development of the Encoded Archival Description DTD”, last revision December 2002, accessible at: . More information in D. Pitti, Encoded Archival Description: The Development of an Encoding Standard for Archival Finding Aids, “The American Archivist”, vol. 60, 3, Summer 1997, pp. 268-283. The first version of EAD was presented in two monographic issues of the journal of the Society of American Archivists: Encoded Archival Description. Part 1 – Context and Theory, “The American Archivist”, vol. 60, 3, Summer 1997; Encoded Archival Description. Part 2 – Case Studies, “The American Archivist”, vol. 60, 4, Fall 1997. See also: EAD. Encoded Archival Description Tag Library. Version 1.0. Prepared and Maintained by the Encoded Archival Description Working Group of the Society of American Archivists and the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, Chicago, The Society of American Archivists, 1998; EAD. Encoded Archival Description Application Guidelines. Version 1.0. Prepared and Maintained by the Encoded Archival Description Working Group of the Society of American Archivists, Chicago, The Society of American Archivists, 1999. The second version of EAD, that is EAD - Encoded Archival Description, Version 2002, is accessible at: .
²² Further information on EAC, included the DTD, are available on its “official” web sites. At . See also D. Pitti, Creator Description: Encoded Archival Context, in “Cataloging & Classification Quarterly”, vol 38, 3-4, 2004, accessible on-line, at .

²³ See “SPS Workflow”, draft adopted by ICA/SPS, Bern, 1 June 2005, to be published on the ICA web site.
²⁴ See “Section of Professional Standards and Best Practices Minutes of the Bureau meeting in Bern, June 1st, 2005”, to be published on the ICA web site. In Bern the Bureau of the new Section was appointed too. Marion Beyea (Canada) was elected as the Chair of the Section. Vitor da Fonseca (Brazil) and Blanca Desantes (Spain) were elected as Vice-Chairs. Claire Sibille (France) was elected as French-speaking secretary. An English-speaking secretary shall be appointed in the next future. Per-Gunnar Ottosson (Sweden) and Rosine Cleyet-Michaud (France) were appointed as representatives from areas of priority of archival work (archival description and appraisal).