Jenny Bunn from UCL starting with a summary of history of archival description standards – from USMARC AMC (1977) to ISAD(G) (1st edition formally published 1994).

Meanwhile WGSAD in the US published ‘Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook” – also in 1994. Contains a wide variety of standards relevant to archives – from technical standards to Chicago Manual of Style.

EAD has its origin in encoding the Finding Aid – not to model archive data per se. EAD v1.0 released 1998

Also a mention of ISO23081 – metadata for Records (records management)

Bunn suggests that ISAD(G) is designed for information exchange – not for Archival Description. Specifically ISAD(G) doesn’t discuss the authenticity of records. At this point (says Bunn) ISAD(G) more a straight-jacket than enabler.

Call to action – move to ‘meaning’ vs information exchange in standards.

Point from Jane Stevenson that ISAD(G) not that great for information exchange! But Jenny makes point that as a schema it could serve the purpose – lack of content standard is a barrier to information exchange even within ISAD(G)