Does IranMARC Support Encoded Archival Description (EAD)?

Document Type : Research َ Article

Authors

1 Assistant professor, National Library and Archives of Iran

2 Assisitant professor of knowledge and information science department of Allameh Tabataba’i University ,Tehran, Iran

3 M.A, Knowledge and information sciences, Faculty of Psyvhology and Education sciences, Allameh Tabataba”i University

Abstract

Purpose: The first objective of our study was to determine whether Encoded Archival EAD is compatible with IranMARC (local version of UNIMARC for Iran). The second objective was to explore EAD elements with high priority. The latter is highly important to the work of Archivists at the National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI) for converting archival records to EAD.
Method: The research steps were as follows: 1) Development of a map to match EAD with both UNIMARC and IranMARC; 2) Quantifying EAD; 3) Weighting EAD elements; 4) Determining structural compatibility EAD with UNIMARC and IranMARC and identification of EAD elements with high priorities to value corresponding fields in UNIMARC and IranMARC.
Findings: The developed map of EAD-UNIMARC-IranMARC showed that 77 EAD elements out of 107 have corresponding fields in UNIMARC and 72 in IranMARC. Structural compatibility rate of UNIMARC and EAD was 73% and 68.7% with IranMARC. Also, 75 EAD elements out of 107 were found to be of high priority.
Conclusion: This research primarily contributes to the improvement of information organization in Iran and to the development of a map of EAD-UNIMARC-IranMARC. This map not only will serve as a tool for measuring structural compatibility EAD with UNIMARC and IranMARC, but is valuable by itself. In this map we have used the fields of block 4 to establish connections among archives records.
Currently, archivists of NLAI suffice to create most of the records at a file level. Our findings can be used to prepare a manual. In addition to structural compatibility of IranMARC with EAD, the method of arrangement and description may affect the readiness of conversion of archival records to EAD. High rate of compatibility EAD to UNIMARC (73%) may be promising for countries who have used UNIMARC to retrieve their archival materials and intent to implement EAD to move toward linked data and connection to semantic web.
The lack of 30 EAD corresponding elements in UNIMARC is an issue. We will communicate with IranMARC Committee and ask them to prepare and forward proposals for this purpose, to the Permanent UNIMARC Committee (PUC). By identification of EAD elements with high priority, NLAI may generate enhanced records to convert to EAD by preparing a manual for required and high priority EAD elements. The reason for the difference in structural compatibility of UNIMARC and IranMARC with EAD is the failure of National Library of Iran Software (called RASA) to update IranMARC. Fields of 371, 631, 632 should be added to RASA immediately.
Our findings may be useful to countries who use UNIMARC. The method of quantifying EAD may be applicable to other models and standards. Also, we found that some EAD elements have several fields in UNIMARC and IranMARC.
Further research can be carried out to explore the value of each field. This helps archival centers to make decisions about the priority of fields when one element has several corresponding fields. We suggest that the content of NLAI database for archival records be reviewed based on the map we developed. This would be helpful in identifying possible required fields as well as fields with high priority once conversion to EAD is to be done.

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References

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History

  • Receive Date: 03 April 2021
  • Revise Date: 17 April 2021
  • Accept Date: 20 April 2021

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