In general, DACS should encourage/require archivists to be more transparent in archival description

[Matthew Gorham]

Link to relevant DACS principle

Principle 1. Archival description expresses professional ethics and values.

Principle 5. Archival description must be clear about what archivists know, what they don’t know, and how they know it.

Principle 6. Archivists must document and make discoverable the actions they take on records.

Describe how DACS does not currently meet this principle

In practice, DACS just doesn't do enough to encourage or require archivists to be transparent about their interventions into collections, and the individual/institutional biases that shape the descriptive records they create. The Processing Information note (7.1.8) is currently the most straightforward and simple way of encouraging transparency in description and it is buried in the second-to-last chapter of Part I. It should be made a single-level-minimum required DACS element. To go even further, it might be desirable to create a whole new chapter of DACS Part I that deals with documenting descriptive interventions and institutional/individual biases that shape descriptive records.

Additional specific ways that DACS could foster greater transparency in archival description, include (but aren't limited to):

-Requiring that archivists include citations for information sources consulted when creating description.
-Requiring the creation of detailed archival authority records for archival processors and associating them with descriptive records that they have authored.
-Revising DACS 3.1 (Scope and Content note) to put a greater emphasis on documenting gaps or silences in collections. Currently the only (very brief) reference to this in 3.1 is the notion of "completeness," which doesn't seem sufficient to address this issue. New examples of S&C notes that include this kind of information would also be helpful.

I expect that this will require a

• Minor change to DACS
• Major change to DACS

Link(s) to any relevant part(s) of DACS

7.1.8. Processing Information note
3.1. Scope and Content
Chapter 9. Archival Authority Records