Appendix A - Society of American Archivists

E-mail: jcarll@radcliffe.eduPhone:Official Comment? No----------------------------------------DACS REFERENCE:Other/No rule----------------------------------------BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CHANGE:Give greater prominence to instruction currently buried in footnotes,particularly those regarding the use of abbreviations and square brackets. Alsoexplain the reason behind such instructions.----------------------------------------RATIONALE:DACS provides an easily accessible and understood source to point to as reasoningfor changing entrenched practices, but when rules/instructions are buried infootnotes, they are difficult to reference and are more easily ignored thaninformation in the main text. Change is difficult and one of the strongestmotivations for archivists to change their practices is a change in acceptedarchival standards. Therefore, the more straightforwardly DACS rules are stated,the more likely they are to be adopted.DACS REVISION:Submitted: 4/13/2011Name: Johanna CarllAffiliation: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Insititute, Harvard UniversityE-mail: jcarll@radcliffe.eduPhone:Official Comment? No----------------------------------------DACS REFERENCE:Other/No rule----------------------------------------BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CHANGE:Address the use of acronyms.----------------------------------------RATIONALE:The Schlesinger Library has a long history of using acronyms to refer toorganizations in their archival descriptions. Sometimes, these acronyms areAction: DACS Revision Page 15 of 158 0113-II-A-DACS