National description strategy 2021–2024

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August 2021

1. Acknowledgement

The National Archives of Australia acknowledges all Indigenous Australians and their continuing connection to Country, culture and community. Through considered practice, we respect and uphold the rights and cultural obligations that are inherent in our collection.

2. Policy context

The National Archives describes records in order to document when, how, why and by whom Australian Government records were created, accumulated and managed over time. The description of a record and the context within which it was created ensures a record can be understood, is discoverable and is able to be used and reused by researchers for a range of different purposes.

The description of a record at item level is the first crucial step to ensuring a record is known, available and accessible to users either online, or onsite through the National Archives' network of research centres.

Description as an activity is also an enabler of other core business activities of the National Archives. Description of the collection at item level provides the foundation from which operational and service delivery, including storage, lending and retrieval, reference services, declassification, public programs, digitisation and preservation, can occur. Without an appropriate description, a record cannot be easily identified as an entity or be delivered to and accessed by clients.

3. Purpose

The National description strategy 2021–2024 outlines the National Archives' approach, focus and priorities for description activities over the next 3 years. The strategy operates in conjunction with the annual National description implementation plan to provide the basis from which all description activities are informed.

The strategy aligns with the National Archives' strategic direction as articulated in the Corporate plan 2020–21 to 2023–24 and the draft Strategy 2030: a transformed and trusted National Archives.

4. Audience

Delivery of the strategy is the responsibility of all staff within the National Archives involved in activities to describe the national archival collection.

5. Corporate vision and objectives

The National Archives is committed to being a world-leading archive and strives to strengthen Australia's cultural identity and democracy by connecting people with the evidence of Australian Government activities and decisions.

In pursuing this vision, the National Archives has committed to a dual role, as a leader in information governance, providing advice and policy to support best-practice records management; and as a leader in securing, preserving and providing access to the national archival collection to government agencies, researchers and the community.

The National Archives is operating in an increasingly pressured environment. A number of challenges are arising from within this environment and are presenting as critical issues requiring focused, deliberate action in order to fulfil our role and realise our vision. The National Archives' Corporate plan 2020–21 to 2023–24 and Strategy 2030: a transformed and trusted National Archives seek to respond to these challenges through successful delivery of 4 key strategies, namely:

  • enabling best-practice information and data management by Australian Government entities
  • securing and preserving archivally significant Australian Government information and data
  • connecting Australians to the National Archives and the national archival collection
  • innovating business practices and processes to develop the National Archives' capability and capacity to lead archival change in the digital age.

This strategy contributes directly to the National Archives' achievement of the connection and innovation strategies, by developing pathways to connect Australians to the national archival collection, programs and services; and by creating opportunities to build the capability and capacity of staff involved in description activities.

This strategy also contributes to and supports the National Archives' achievement of the secure strategy by addressing the metadata of records being preserved.

6. The collection

The national archival collection contains 360 kilometres of analog records and objects and 5 petabytes of digital records, constituting some 40 million individual records.

The provenance of all of records within the national collection is described, and all records are associated and controlled within the National Archives' systems. Approximately 40%, or 15 million records within the national archival collection are fully described at item level and available for access via the National Archives' online finding aid, RecordSearch.

The majority of the national archival collection, while available for access, is not described at item level and, as a consequence, is not easily discoverable by clients without assistance from the National Archives' Reference Service.

Records that are not described also impact the ability of operational and service delivery areas of the National Archives, including declassification, digitisation and public programs, to deliver on their objectives and contribute to the strategic objectives and vision of the organisation.

7. How we describe records

The central mechanism for facilitating access to the national archival collection is via item level metadata. The registration and control of records at item level within the National Archives' systems and finding aids enables researchers to search directly for a decision, action, person, event, place or topic of interest.

Description activity to enable this access is led by technically trained National Archives staff. Complex description activity involving description of complicated entity relationships and arrangement of records is undertaken within description workgroups nationally. Less complex, more straightforward description activities are overseen and managed by description staff, and are undertaken in collaboration with other business areas, volunteers, targeted partnerships and projects, and through funded outsourced arrangements.

The National Archives describes records in accordance with the Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) system of archival control. The CRS system comprises 5 main related entities, namely, Commonwealth Organisation, Commonwealth Agency, Commonwealth Person, Series and Items. A definition of each entity is provided in Attachment A: Definition of CRS entities.

All records within the collection are associated, described and controlled through these entities. Information about the relationships that exist between these entities enables the context and content of a record to be understood by researchers and National Archives' staff.

The increasing complexities presented by records in a variety of formats, including digital, digital surrogates and hybrid records, have prompted a review of the effectiveness of the CRS data model. The outcome of this review has been the evolution of the CRS and the development of a new data model, the Archival Control Model (ACM). The ACM supplements CRS entities with additional entities including Relationship, Mandate and Representation while it redefines the item entity. Attachment B: The Archival Control Model provides a definition of the ACM entities.

8. What records to describe

The National Archives selects records for description that are of interest to a wide range of audiences to maximise understanding and engagement with records, and provide opportunities for the use and re-use of the national archival collection.

Records will be prioritised for description on the basis of the following characteristics:

  • Archival value – Only records that are confirmed as records warranting retention as national archives will be selected for description.
  • Suitability for access – Only records that are in the open access period or are within 3 years of the open period will be prioritised for description.

Other attributes of records that will be considered as part of the selection process include:

  • Interest and use – In order to maximise engagement and access to the collection, records that are known to be highly used by researchers or have the potential to be highly used by researchers will be considered for description. The National Archives will reflect on use data and engage with civil society and other stakeholders to identify specific records that are likely to attract high interest and therefore warrant consideration of further description activity.
  • Records of national or local significance – Records that have special capacity to reflect significant historical events, illustrate the workings of Australian democracy at the national level, and core records of local significance to a specific state or territory, group of researchers and/or section of Australian society will be considered for description activity. Priority will be given to the item level description of records that have been relocated interstate to another National Archives office.
  • Support for specific strategic priorities – Description activity will also be considered in support of other program or organisational activities and objectives, including the annual Cabinet records release, commitments in relation to the Tandanya– Adelaide declaration and the implementation of the Our way: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protocols, records at risk and large-scale outsourced digitisation projects.

9. Our objectives

During the period 2021 to 2024 the National Archives is committed to achieving 3 description objectives, namely:

  • increasing the number of items described by 1.7 million items each financial year to 2024
  • exploring new tools, technologies, mechanisms and collaborative opportunities to support high volume description activities and enable records and record content to be accessed through multiple platforms
  • further developing the technical skills, expertise and capability of staff to equip them to effectively meet the National Archives' description objectives and challenges.

10. Our initiatives

During the period 2021 to 2024 the National Archives will achieve the strategic objectives by undertaking the following initiatives.

Increase the number of items described by 1.7 million items each financial year to 2024:

  • Further develop arcHIVE for public transcription activities
  • Undertake proactive harvesting of item level descriptions from legacy consignment lists held by the National Archives and agencies
  • Guided by the Our way: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protocols, undertake complex arrangement and description activities on targeted, archivally significant records including records about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

Explore new tools, technologies, mechanisms and collaborative opportunities to support high-volume description activities and enable records and record content to be accessed through multiple platforms:

  • Implement 'description first' approach for all collection activities, where appropriate
  • Include the generation of metadata in all outsourced contracts for the digitisation and preservation of records at risk
  • Explore opportunities to develop new external relationships and partnerships to support and enable description of the collection
  • Explore and expand use of new digital technologies available through external platforms for public transcription activities
  • Explore opportunities to enhance business systems to support the enhancement of collection metadata

Further developing the technical skills, expertise and capability of staff to equip them to effectively meet National Archives' description objectives and challenges:

  • Develop digital archiving capability of description staff
  • Develop basic description skills of National Archives staff in areas other than description with a view to instituting ‘one touch description' practices

11. Measures of success

The National Archives' success at implementing the objectives and initiatives of the strategy during 2021 to 2024 will be measured by:

  • Increase in the number of items described each financial year to 2024 – target 1.7 million items
  • Increase in accuracy of contextual information contained within series, agency, Commonwealth person, and organisation entity registrations on RecordSearch
  • Increase in the number of volunteers collaborating with staff to deliver description projects
  • Development of relationships, partnerships and collaborations with external organisations, clients and civil society which contribute to percentage of the collection described
  • Positive feedback from stakeholders
  • Increase in the number of staff undertaking technical training and participating in pilot projects including those focused on digital archiving skill
  • Consistency of metadata across all National Archives platforms and systems

Attachment A: Definition of CRS entities

The National Archives describes records in accordance with the Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) system of archival control. The CRS system comprises 5 main related entities, namely, Commonwealth Organisation, Commonwealth Agency, Commonwealth Person, Series and Items.

A description of each entity is as follows.

Commonwealth Organisations

This entity includes governments, learned society, church or company bodies that are independent in operation.

A registration within CRS at organisation level is used to link one or more agencies, historically, to their broadest administrative group. The National Archives registers organisations with a CO (Commonwealth Organisation) number. There are 124 organisations recognised by the National Archives.

Commonwealth Agencies

This entity is used to register distinct and recognisable bodies that have responsibility for carrying out the administrative functions of the Commonwealth. Agencies can be central, state or local offices of Commonwealth government departments, statutory authorities, courts, or tribunals. Agencies create records to document the functions and evidence of their activities for their own business purposes. The National Archives registers agencies with a CA (Commonwealth Agency) number. There are 9,446 agencies recognised by the National Archives.

 

Commonwealth Persons

Significant individuals who have served or had a close association with the Commonwealth, such as prime ministers and governors-general, create and manage records in the same way as an agency. The National Archives registers persons with a CP (Commonwealth Person) number. There are 1029 Commonwealth People recognised by the National Archives.

 

Series

Commonwealth Agencies and Commonwealth Persons create records that can be arranged into series. A series is a group of records that has resulted from the same accumulation or filing process (with the same numerical, alphabetical, chronological or other identifiable sequence) or which has a similar format or information content. A series can be a single item or many items. The National Archives identifies series with a series number. The series number is usually in the form of a letter prefix followed by a number. There are 68,720 series recognised by the National Archives.

 

Items

Items constitute the individual records, volumes, maps, films or any other unit that make up a series. The National Archives identifies each item by the number or symbol that the agency used when it created the record. An access status is recorded at item level and digital copies are generally loaded against an item entry on RecordSearch. There are over 15 million individual records recognised by the National Archives.

Source: The Commonwealth record series (CRS) manual.

Attachment B: The Archival Control Model

The National Archives’ Archival Control Model (ACM) provides a framework for the archival management system of the National Archives. It allows for the registration, description, preservation and management of Australian government records, and the documentation of their context. It also provides for access to records in the National Archives' custody.

The model also defines the National Archives' approach for describing storage and preservation events related to the management of records over time, a key aspect of maintaining the provenance of records, and of ensuring their authenticity and integrity. In addition, the model defines how different representations of a record are managed and linked, for example negatives, prints, preservation master copies, access copies and so on. 

In collaboration with subject matter experts from across the National Archives, an updated ACM and metadata schema have been developed along with a strategy for their implementation. In 2020, an ACM Committee was established to manage all future updates to the model and schema. Work is currently under way to implement the proposed updates to the ACM.

The following describes the entities in the model in more detail.

Agent

A person, organisation, or system responsible for the performance of some business activity, including actions on records.

Function

Functions are the responsibilities that are managed by an Agent to fulfil its mandated purpose and business requirements. A function is specific to the time in which the responsibility it represents exists and can move from one Agent to another over time.

Record

Information in any format created, received and maintained as evidence of activity by an Agent. The Record entity represents Australian Government records. A Record is an Intellectual Unit with zero, one or more Representations (forms). The concepts of Intellectual Unit and Representation allow for the flexible description and management of records that have multiple manifestations (representations).

Relationship

A link within or between entities establishing provenance and records context. Relationships can provide context to the creation of entities, such as control or succession. They can document an action or activity carried out by an Agent or on a Record, such as classification, sentencing, preservation or transfer.

Source: Archival Control Model