Appendix A - Society of American Archivists

egulation and shareholder actions,consumer protection, fair housing,foreclosures, bankruptcies, education,labor, employment, international trade,immigration, public records are alllegal subjects that frequently invite theparticipation of third parties (personsnot directly involved in the main case,but who are affected by theoutcomes).Conference of the United States make any provision for the preservation of federaljudges’ papers. Judges’ staffs or the clerks of court cannot determine where thepapers go, and the National Archives cannot accept the collections as part of therecords of the courts. There are no court funds available for the preservation of judges’papers, and the federal records centers do not provide temporary storage of judges’chambers papers10.Current DACS rules pertain to courts as institutions, but do notaddress the naming conventions of court cases. How can the socialidentities and networks of litigation participants be identified inarchival records?The relationship between access to information and access to justice is at the heart ofcivil litigation. Private parties (and public agencies who litigate) have many availablepoints of access to their information when they decide to file a lawsuit. Intellectually andhistorically the connections between these parties and their information sources areopaque. Lawyers can talk to their clients and other willing witnesses. Documents canbe gathered. Specific rules or practices may sometimes limit the information neededbefore a formal lawsuit is brought. Many controversies brought to the judiciary affectmore than the immediate adversaries.Two ways by which third parties find representation in the judicial process are throughthe sponsorship (initiating, financing, and conducting) of litigation, and the filing ofamicus curiae briefs.In describing these cases then, we paid careful attention to bringing each of the partiesunique identities into the record (at least within a non viewable metadata field).Description of social identities needs to be associated with itemizedrecordsIf rendered in a consistent form and included in electronic indexes standardizedmetadata terms can become a powerful tool for researchers to discover materialsrelated to that topic. It is a local decision as to which names, terms, and conceptsfound in a description will be included as formal access points, but repositories dealingwith court cases should provide them in all types of descriptions. Such indexingbecomes increasingly important as archivists make encoded finding aids and digitalcontent available to end users through a variety of repository-based and consortialonline resource discovery tools using less precise full-text searches11.One of the archival principles on which DACS rests requires that, in processing legalcollections, it is necessary to describe at an optimum level the court cases as well asthe places these cases are adjudicated.Christopher FelkerPage 9 of 17 | 2 August 201210 See A Guide to the Preservation of Federal Judges’ Papers Second Edition (2009), Federal Judicial History Office Federal Judicial Center at 1.11 DACS at xviii + xixThis fundamental principle isPrinciple 6: The principles of archival description apply equally to recordscreated by corporate bodies, individuals, or families.The documents that are the product of the functions and activities oforganizations may differ in extent, arrangement, subject matter, etc., fromthose that result from the activities of individuals or families. While there maybe valid reasons to distinguish between them in the workflow of a repository,Action: DACS Revision Page 140 of 158 0113-II-A-DACS