Hello,

I'm posting this info on behalf of a colleague who is not subscribed to the listserv.

Caroline Forcier Holloway

Film and Broadcasting

Library and Archives Canada

Ottawa, ON

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_____________________________________________
De : Rodger Andrew
Envoyé : 31 août, 2006 15:31
À : [log in to unmask]
Objet : Photographs processing procedures.

I don't know if this will cover "processing procedures", but the SEPIA people have some very good ideas about archives and phtoographs. 

Subject: Describing photograph collections

SEPIA descriptions of photograph collections

Within the framework of the EU-funded Safeguarding European

Photographic Images for Access (SEPIA) project

<URL:<http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia/>, the working group on

descriptive models has been working on an advisory report to provide

recommendations on how to describe a photographic collection. A

draft version of this report is now available for comments at:

<URL:http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia/workinggroups/wp5/advisory30.pdf>

(PDF, 1619 KB)

The task of the working group has been to analyse existing methods

to describe photographs and devise a basic model. The SEPIA model

will be presented in an advisory report and applied in a software

tool. The draft report contains an extensive overview of the

multi-level structure and individual elements of the model, a

recommended mapping to Qualified Dublin Core and a summary of core

elements. The core elements are meant to be used as guidelines for

institutions that wish to have a basic description model for their

photo collection. The model as a whole provides a more detailed set

of guidelines.

The final version of the advisory report (and the software tool that

will implement it) is scheduled for August 2003. We would very much

appreciate to receive your comments before the 28th of April. Please

feel free to contact me for any additional information.

The SEPIA working group on descriptive models consists of:

    Stockholm City Museum

    Norwegian Archive, Library and Museum Authority

    National Library of Spain

    Finnish Museum of Photography

    European Commission on Preservation and Access

Edwin Klijn

SEPIA Working group on Descriptive Models,

+31 20 551 08 47

As for "processing procedures" -- these will vary from institution to institution and depend on a host of factors including how closely you wish to hew to rules such as RAD; what your clientele expects of you; how easily you want to make your photography available to the public (and to yourself); how valuable your photography is as a part of all your collections; how your physical holdings facilities work.....

RAD says that everything in a series or file should be described as part of that file or series.   So if there's a handful of photos in a series, they should be described in that series.  This is useful -- sometimes.   More generally people are interested in knowing whether or not there are photographs -- not whether there are

photographs in a given series.   And the series title and description often has little to do with the image contents of the photographs found in the series.   For this reason, I usually try to convince people to organize photographs as a separate series; but with the proviso that the photographs can be traced back to their origin within a given file or series through that info being noted on the envelope in which they are located.

If your institution separates material according to media type (for

storage and conservation as well as service reasons) then it is usually more useful to describe the photographs as a separate series.   But if your institution misguidedly thinks that everything is a variation on textual records and therefore should be stored together then probably the best way of handling and describing the photos is as part of the series or file in which they're found.....

My own institution has over 35,000 containers of photographs, containing about 25 million images, so perhaps what we do won't scale to other institutions.

Andrew Rodger

Photo Archivist

Library and Archives Canada

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