Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/Archivists/Citation/Archive 1

Archive 1

Integration into template:citation

As well as {{cite archive...}}, due thought ought to be given to integrating the information in the {{citation}} template. See WP:CITEVAR, in particular §6.1.1. In addition {{cite archive...}} needs to have provision for |ref=harv or similar to generate CITEREF anchors. This leads to another point: as the draft is firmed up the sample markup needs to match the display example. Where for instance does "Tarkington, B." come from? Although I mentioned |ref=harv, it does not need to be a slavish implementation of true Harvard referencing. Take a look at {{NHLE}} where the "author" is English Heritage and the year is the NHLE number. This works well with {{sfn}}. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:53, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Sample formats

Library and Archives Canada suggests ways to cite archival documents here:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/the-public/005-6070-e.html

Sample:

Textual Records -- Private Archives

Footnote

Library and Archives Canada, Alexander Tilloch Galt fonds, MG 27 I D8, "Family correspondence" series, volume 8, page 3316, letter from Elliot Galt to Mrs. A.T. Galt, 19 June 1898, reproduction copy number C-147457.

Credit line

Library and Archives Canada, MG 27 I D8, volume 8, page 3316, reproduction copy number C-147457.

National Archives and Records Administration (US) suggests preferred ways in this document:

http://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/17-citing-records.pdf

Sample:

Amos T. Ackerman, Attorney General, to Richard Crowley, U.S. Attorney, New York, Nov. 23, 1871; Vol. C, Oct. 27, 1871–Apr. 23, 1873, p. 60; Instruction Books, 1870–1904; General Records, Letters Sent, 1849–1919; General Records of the Department of Justice, Record Group 60; National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

There is much related discussion on both of these resources; others from other countries should also be consulted. Neither discusses how to cite a finding aid.

It also occurs to me that we will need to link to (or create) controlled vocabularies, at least for document types.

Allanaaaaaaa (talk) 17:21, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Citation that has been preferred at institutions that I've worked at, where * denotes bare minimum in my mind: Item title*, Box number, Folder number, Collection name*, Collection ID number (aka MS 252 or RG 4.1.8), Repository name, Institution name*.

Example: Field Study program materials, 1960-1962, Box 25, Folder 11, Howard Belding Gill papers, MS.1995.018, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Stephestellar (talk) 15:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Finding aids vs content

First of all, thank you for proposing this! It fills an important gap and will make a significant impact on data quality and the presentation of archival content on Wikipedia. My question is whether {{cite archive...}} will also support cases where a user would like to cite the finding aid itself as a secondary source. Finding aids often include biographical/historical/contextual information that might be worth citing in its own right. As part of the RAMP project, we came up with an ad-hoc template to cite republished archival metadata (finding aids) that had been released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 and GNU Free Documentation licenses. This template was created to meet the needs of a specific project, so I would not hold it up as model (and the actual template code could certainly be improved), but it does define a use case in which someone would want to cite a finding aid rather than the actual content of an archive or special collection. We mainly needed this template to include the licensing information, but there were at least some fields (such as the "repository" parameter) that were not available in generic templates like {{cite web}}. Timathom (talk) (COI) 14:14, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll also add that there's significant interest in the US archives community (and perhaps beyond) in coming up with a more unified abstract data model, some of which comes out of the Project Hydra community. The Society of American Archivists' Technical Subcommittee on Describing Archives: A Content Standard will very likely be taking this up in the coming year. Helrond (talk) 15:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Separating containers and intellectual arrangment

First of all, this is super exciting and I'm so glad it's happening!

The ITEMID element seems to conflate the location of the material with regard to containers (i.e. boxes and folders in the example) with intellectual location (i.e. subfonds, series, record group, etc.). Either additional guidance needs to be provided in the instructions, or perhaps this should be broken into two elements? Helrond (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Good call - two elements might be simpler for users: PhysLoc (physical location) and ItemID (intellectual). Would come in handy with collections made up entirely of letters between two people or similar. Stephestellar (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Template:NRA

Slightly different idea, and in need of revision anyway due to changes in the service, but there is an existing template, Template:NRA which links to information in the UK's National Register of Archives. The old database is now deprecated, and the information incorporated within the main The National Archives Discovery database (catalogue), which is why I say it needs review anyway as the existing database is due to be shut down completely. It might be worth taking a look at this approach too. David Underdown (talk) 16:50, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Item -- should NOT be required

Since this is primarily proposed for "Further reading", "Other sources" "bibliography" or "External links" I suggest that item should not be required. People will want to point to their collection descriptions and not only items in that collection (I am employing the US usage of the word collection, here.) Thanks. Merrilee (talk) 17:54, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Getting it coded/wider disucssion

Hi all, and sorry for being slow on getting this out to the wider community. I've incorporated some of our feedback into the proposal, and put it to the community here for help and discussion. The Interior (Talk) 18:35, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

location parameter required?

As of this writing, the |location= parameter is listed as a required parameter. Does every archive have a location? If the archive is digital and accessible via the web, what would the appropriate value of |location= be? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The holding institution should be provided, as well as the URL. All such records are located in physical collections, or at least they were at one time (and the number of lost records will be quite small when we're talking about records available online); we should specify the institution that's supplying the image of the record. Nyttend (talk) 22:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Summary of feedback

Thank you all for giving your ideas on how this template should work and display. I'm going to summarize everyone's points here, and hopefully we can come to a consensus over the next couple of weeks on how to move forward. After we've settled on format, fields, and layout, we can get to building the template. Summary of points:

• Martin of Sheffield points out that improvements made here should be integrated into Template:Citation, the "generic" citation template. Asks that the new template support Harvard referencing, which is a staple of Good and Featured article referencing. This would involve an "Author" field in order to give the short footnote template the info it needs to display. Also points out our sloppy example ;)
• Dnllnd points out the differences between "collections" and "fonds", and proposes that "Fond" be given its own field. Also points out that, for better verifiability, "series" and "file" would allow more precision. Points out that item-level description is sometimes not done in large collections; fond or file may be the "lowest" level of description in some archives. Therefore, having ITEM as a required field could be problematic.
• Timathom mentions that finding aids are often rich sources of information in themselves and should be linked to prominently. Finding aids could have a dedicated field. (As proposed, the URL-supporting fields are COLLECTIONURL and ITEMURL) Links to the Template:Cite open archival metadata as an example of a similar, but lightweight, template.
• Allanaaaaaaa points out the potential need for controlled vocabularies in some fields, e.g. document type. Also presents the LAC standards for archival description.
• Stephestellar suggests the minimum standard at their institution as a guide: Item title, Box number, Folder number, Collection name, Collection ID number (aka MS 252 or RG 4.1.8), Repository name, Institution name.
• Helrond points out that the Society of American Archivists working on a content standard for collection description. We should try to incorporate some of their proposals to keep the template in line with future institutional practices. Helrond, are you able to summarize where you think the technical commitee will be going with this?

I will know more about future developments in August after the [Meeting of the Society of American Archivists]. However, I should point out that [Archives: A Content Standard] does list required elements, which may be helpful to consider as a starting place. I think the required elements in the Identity section (Reference Code, Name and Location of Repository, Title, Date, Extent and Name of Creator) would be applicable here. Helrond (talk) 14:30, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

• Helrond and Stephstellar point out weaknesses in using ITEMID - physical vs. intellectual arrangement. They propose two fields for this: PhysLoc (physical location) and ItemID (intellectual)
• David Underdown points out Template:NRA as an existing template that may be instructive for this one.

If I've muddled anyone's points, please feel free to edit/append! Further comments are most welcome, and I will try to propose some actual changes to the proposal based on feedback over the next few weeks. Excited to see this come together, The Interior (Talk) 18:08, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

looking at this, using item in field names might be confusing, not every collection is itemised, many of ours only go down to piece level, or on the other hand, you might want to refer to a spefic page or folio or other subdivision within a piece or item. Maybe a more generic term like catalgoue reference, which would allow refernce to a appropriate level of description as required. David Underdown (talk) 10:33, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Has there been any consideration given to integrating this template's parameters and planned uses with DACS provisions? I don't see anything about DACS here on this page, aside from a remark that SAA's talking about revising it. Nyttend (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Preventing use in citations

Looks like everything here is a discussion of the technical side; I have a more general issue.

If someone wants to use this in a further reading or bibliography section, as stated at the very top of the page, that's great. But how are we supposed to discourage its use in citations? Virtually all items that will use this template are going to be primary sources (otherwise they'd not be in the archives), which are almost always unsuitable for citations. Is there perhaps a way to have the template throw up a big warning when it's encased within <ref> and </ref> tags? Nyttend (talk) 22:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Templates cannot see what lies outside the {{ and }} boundaries so cannot know if they are inside <ref>...</ref> tags.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:23, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Idea good, name terrible

We need to change the name to avoid confusion with the archive url tag. It will make it impossible to find info on the one you want. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:34, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Collection vs fonds

Intellectually archivists often differentiate between collections and fonds. Though opinions vary, 'Archive(s)' (and the resulting hierarchical arrangement using fonds, series, file, item) is used to denote material that was created by an individual or organization where context, original order and function are of major importance. 'Collection' is used to denote material that has been brought together based on a unifying theme. As a result FONDSNAME and FINDINGAID may be more appropriate, if for no other reason than to avoid contributing to the conflation of archive and collection.

A possible solution, though not necessarily a good one, may be having two templates - one for archival material and and one for special collections material. One for archives (fonds-based material) and one for collections (artifical groupings based on a common event, topic, etc).

Another thought is that while items will likely be the ideal in terms of citations, item level description is not universally common in archival practice. Often there is too much material to merit item level description and as a result, staff and researchers rely on fonds, series or file level descriptions and file lists as entry points. Item level descriptions will undoubtedly be more common with digitized content due to metadata requirements, however the current version of the template doesn't accommodate series or file level descriptions. For example if a wiki pages indicates that John Doe and Jane Doe had a decades-long correspondence, one could reasonably point to the existence of a correspondence series within the Jane Doe fonds as proof, but I'm not sure how that would be accommodated here. Where would the fonds name go? And the series name? Would it be appropriate to put them in the same field?

All of that said, I am very, very excited about this! -Dnllnd (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Also see this Twitter exchange -Dnllnd (talk) 19:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree with these points. A fonds and a collection differ intelligibly in origin and content, as this writer has indicated. In the citation list therefore, Fonds should be in bold (?). "Collections are, unlike fonds, artificial accumulations of materials and often lack a natural, organic unity."—Rules for Archival Description (Ottawa: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, 2008) Torontonian1 (talk) 18:12, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

I could be wrong about this, but in the US, almost nobody uses the word "fonds" (which I've always been told refers to series). "Archival collection" is a general phrase describing archives, whether organic or artificial. When the word "collection" is used in the specific name of a collection, it can (but not always) refer to a group of materials gathered either by the institution or a specific donor who wants to keep the material together. In any case, having all these parameters optional can compensate for regional differences in language use. - kosboot (talk) 22:21, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

kosboot, I'm not sure that that's true - if different regions use the same word in different ways, how do we know which meaning was intended when someone uses the word in a citation? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:12, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Nikkimaria - We can't be absolutely sure we know the intended meaning. Context (looking up the particular archive citation) should provide clarification. So long as all these parameters are optional, it should address usage in different archives/languages/countries. - kosboot (talk) 13:53, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

But the purpose of having a citation template at all is to standardize presentation and metadata - if you have to look it up anyway to understand what was meant, that seems contrary to that purpose. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:53, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but how else to manage the different terms used in different archives? Unlike EAD, I don't think WP should or could be in the business of asking archives (particularly in various international countries) to standardized their usage. I think the best solution is to mirror the language used by the particular archive. - kosboot (talk) 19:35, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion

Thanks to Sadads I found this work-in-progress. I think it's fabulous. May I suggest another optional field: classmark (or call number, or shelfmark). Also, I know of a very small public library whose archival holdings are not in their local catalog but are listed in Worldcat. Thus, perhaps a Worldcat identifier could be another optional field? - kosboot (talk) 20:43, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

As far as I know, all Worldcat holdings use OCLC identifiers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:19, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, the accession number - that should be an optional field. - kosboot (talk) 03:39, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

More suggestions: add "Box" and "Folder" to the template. - kosboot (talk) 16:26, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Folder is the same as file; that field could contain either the file number, file name, or both. Box I can see as an optional field. In most fonds/collections, the box number isn't needed, but it does have application is some cases. -- user:Zanimum

Local variation is an important issue to encompass. In the library where I work, we have thousands of archival collections and it would be impossible to locate anything without identifying a box number. If the word "file" is preferred over folder, then make "folder" an optional label or explain that it encompasses that term. - kosboot (talk) 02:01, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

AMI !

I just realized that this is excellent for paper. It is not as good for AMI (the current acronym for audio & moving image) material. What should be done - a separate template for AMI materials, or more fields? - kosboot (talk) 00:05, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

In most cases I would use {{cite AV media}} for AMI materials, even archival ones - does that work, or do you feel it's missing details? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

So there is a separate template for av media - thanks for that Nikkimaria. For the little I engage in that material, I'd say it's missing a number of fields, mostly related to format ("audio tape" can mean lots of different things) but also other things (for example, time within an audio or a/v fragment). But I'll let those interested deal with that. - kosboot (talk) 02:49, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

It does have |time= and |minutes=, though |type= could certainly have expanded documentation. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:55, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Can we do this thing?

Pretty please, can we make this happen? -- user:zanimum — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.71.176 (talk) 01:38, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

user:zanimum, working on it again ... The Interior (Talk) 16:40, 11 March 2016 (UTC)