Table of Contents

Part 1 The nature of archival description: what are archives?; archival arrangement; the function of a finding aid system; level and depth of description; the multi-level rule; fitting levels together; the two modes of archival description; depth of description; other aspects of archival description. Part 2 The data structure of an archival description: the purpose of data structure; how the table of data elements is made up; summary table of data elements; general rules; specific rules. Part 3 Recommended description formats: macro and micro descriptions; paragraph or list mode; description formats; management heading; group descriptions; subgroup descriptions; class descriptions; item descriptions; piece descriptions; composite descriptions; standard listing conventions. Part 4 Typology of archival descriptions - special formats: title deeds; letters and correspondence; photographs; cartographic archives; architectural and other plans; sound archives; film and video archives; machine readable archives; MARC for archives and manuscripts; dictionary of technical terms; sources used in the dictionary.