NRAM Newsletter Articles on Registers of Archives

One Stop Shopping: Making Archival Dreams a Reality

Thomas Wilsted

Thomas Wilsted spent the years 1973-1978 as Manuscripts Librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library and made substantial contributions both to decisions affecting NRAM, and as the founding President of ARANZ (Archives and Records Association of New Zealand). Michael Hoare went so far as to call the mid-1970s "the Wilsted era", in his article 'The National Register of Archives and Manuscripts: a Piper's Lament or a pipe dream?' (Archifacts, October 1996, pp.216-234).

Now Director of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut Libraries (an OCLC Library), Thomas Wilsted gives an overview of experience in America over the last two decades, for those concerned with sharing information about archives.

It would be great to see Tom back in New Zealand one day, maybe for ARANZ's 25th anniversary in 2001?

When I returned to the United States in 1978 after a five-year sojourn in New Zealand, I discovered that the practice of describing archives and manuscript collections had changed very little. Materials were still cataloged locally and if one wanted to ensure that researchers could find specific collections, a form with standardized information had to be submitted to the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) at the Library of Congress. NUCMC, first published in 1962, was still distributed in printed form and could only be found in research and large public libraries. Entries were still dependent upon institutional submission and did not include official archives. Archivists and manuscript curators still had a goal of one national union list or register allowing researchers to discover all collections relating to a single topic but current efforts were far from achieving that goal. However, the next decade would see major changes.

While efforts to establish union catalogs in some countries were driven by national leadership and planning, efforts in the United States during the 1980's were more market-driven. The widespread development and use of mainframe computers during the 1970's radically changed the ability to compile and disseminate information about books and collections. Librarians in the United States developed local, statewide and regional bibliographic databases designed to mechanize and enhance the cataloging and inter-library loan of books. Although primarily designed for use by librarians, members of the public soon gained indirect and then direct access to information.

During the 1980's with the widespread use of the mini and then the personal computer, two national bibliographic utilities gained prominence within the United States: OCLC - On-line Center for Library Computing, and RLIN - the Research Libraries Information Network. Connections between local libraries and these national utilities allowed individual libraries to use and modify national cataloging information created by the Library of Congress and other libraries in their local computer while sharing information about their collections with other libraries. With the development of on-line local catalogs (OPACS) and the connection with bibliographic utilities, adding information to what was becoming a union catalog became more seamless.

Archivists noted the value of the centralized catalogs being developed by librarians. With leadership from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the Society of American Archivists' National Information Systems Task Force and RLIN, they began to develop standardized descriptive rules and formats for sharing computerized information about archives and manuscripts. The development and acceptance of USMARC Format for Archival and Manuscripts Control (MARC-AMC) brought a rapid increase in the number of collections described in these two databases.

However, the use of either of these two bibliographic utilities was expensive and required a high level of training. RLIN, with its primary constituency of research libraries, focused more heavily on encouraging and including both archives and manuscripts collection descriptions in it holdings. As this body of information grew, public archives also began adding their holdings to RLIN. Although OCLC first focused on public libraries, its widespread acceptance meant that it also contained many descriptions of archives and manuscripts collections within its database. The number of submissions was also encouraged by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission that began providing grants to support archives and manuscripts projects in 1976. If a project involved the description of archival materials, institutions submitting grants were strongly encouraged to submit their cataloging to one of the national bibliographic utilities.

Recognition of OCLC and RLIN's leadership in becoming the de facto union catalog came in two ways. The first was the development of software for creating MARC-AMC records on microcomputers that would allow institutions to upload this information electronically. Early ventures included MicroMARC and MARCIVES. However, with the development of the Internet, smaller archives had direct access to both OCLC and RLIN. The second event in this recognition was the decision by NUCMC in 1986 to enter new and to begin retrospective entry of its descriptions into RLIN.

In recent years both RLIN and OCLC have had a greater international presence. Records have been added to RLIN from multi-national projects involving U.S. institutions. These include the University of Michigan-Vatican Archives Project and a project by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to catalog records in Russia documenting the Communist regime. At the same time, OCLC has created a number of international partnerships that encourage the wider sharing of descriptive records.

RLIN has lead the way in compiling not only cataloging records of manuscripts nd archives but is rapidly expanding its database to include collection inventories marked up in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) using Encoded Archival Description (EAD). The Research Libraries Group, RLIN's parent organization, is offering to mount this information without charge to members and non-members alike with the expectation of making its database more comprehensive and offering users an expanded service.

What is the future of these union catalogs nationally and internationally? Recent trends in the United States point toward greater searchability of records across databases. The acceptance of the Z39.50 standard by librarians allows library operating systems to search across a wide number of catalogs for common terms and subjects. Where archives have mounted either HTML or SGML finding aids that are linked to the bibliographic record, researchers have a wide range of descriptive information that is quickly and easily available.

Finally, the Internet itself offers researchers a tool that opens a wide range of possibilities. It is a free-form solution to the delivery of information. Its rapid expansion and increasingly more sophisticated search engines allow archives users varied avenues to find collections of interest. With web-based union catalogs, searchers find a mixture of detailed description often combined with information coming from institutional web sites. Such links via the web may ultimately allow what will become a virtual international catalog of archives and manuscript collections built upon individual national efforts. Perhaps researchers do not have long to wait before one-stop shopping for archives becomes a reality.