Appendix A - Society of American Archivists

Reviewers were pleased overall with the content of the revision, and happy to see the new section onarchival authority records and to see part III removed. Although understanding that the companionwebsite will provide additional examples, reviewers regretted the loss of MARC and EAD encodingexamples, as well as the full text examples found in the Appendix D (where sample EAC-CPF encodingwould be a useful addition.) Reviewers were happy to note that changes in formulating titles aredetermined by the institution (no mandated move away from "papers".) Some of the copy-editingproblems that were caught (occasional references to "supplied" rather than "devised", pp. 37-38) weknow that TS-DACS is already aware of.General Comments and Questions References to AACR2 should either be deleted or changed to “RDA or AACR2” (as is done in 2.6),given that RDA will be the predominant North American bibliographic content standardbeginning in 2013. There is concern that description of digital material should not obscure the content of thematerial. While extent, for instance, must be expressed for the digital format, titles and otherdescriptions of content (such as sound recordings, moving images, maps) should not beobscured by describing them as electronic files.Preface: We are assuming that the preface to the 2013 edition will be written after the other text isfinalized. The remainder of the prefatory matter should be reviewed as well.Introduction: Paragraph on Examples (p. 5) will need to be rewritten if most MARC and EAD examples havebeen removed, and to clarify when they appear; it looks like these occur only when the ruleindicates that information can be given in text or in a code. EAC-CPF examples should bementioned here as well.Chapter1, Levels of Description:Second paragraph (new text): Given that the first sentence states that a finding aid can consistof either a single level of description or multiple levels of description, the third sentence is notquite logical. Can a finding aid combine both a single-level and multiple-levels of description?Would something similar to the following be slightly clearer (if it accurately conveys theintention of the second paragraph)?A finding aid that consists of multiple levels of description may provide information atsuccessively narrower levels of arrangement (such as subseries, files, and even items)for some series while confining information to a single level of hierarchy for others.Fourth paragraph (existing text): Copy editing issue. “Twenty-five” is spelled out in the firstsentence of the fourth paragraph, but the number 25 is used in the first sentence of the sixthparagraph.Requirements for Single-level Descriptions:Action: DACS Revision Page 151 of 158 0113-II-A-DACS