Overview[edit]

When fully adopted in 2005, DACS replaced Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts, the previous SAA archival cataloging standard.[2] It is the United States implementation of ISAD(G).


DACS consists of two parts: Part I, Describing Archival Materials, and Part II, Archival Authority Records.[3] DACS is concerned with providing a framework for creating useful tools for researchers in archives through the description of records, historical agents, historical activities, and the relationships between them.[4]


The elements and frameworks of DACS are closely related to both the library-focused cataloging rules of Resource Description and Access (RDA) and the international description standards formed by ISAD(G).[2] The main goal of archival description is to assist users in finding the documents they are looking for through the creation of access tools such as catalogs or finding aids, and DACS exists to provide a standard for creating those tools.[5] DACS has now been widely adopted by the archival community throughout the United States.[6] It is currently maintained by the SAA's Technical Subcommittee on Describing Archives: A Content Standard and the most up-to-date version is hosted on their GitHub.

Part I Describing Archival Materials[edit]

The first part of DACS deals with rules for crafting archival description. It can be broken down into levels of description, with each level adding a layer of complexity. DACS discretely describes these levels as Single Level Required, Single Level Optimum, Single Level Added Value, Multilevel Required, Multilevel Optimum, and Multilevel Added Value.[9] Every level requires that the DACS metadata elements from the previous levels are complete, and that the relationship between the current level and previous levels are clearly presented.[10] The rest of Part I defines the metadata elements required for each level of description.

Part II Archival Authority Records[edit]

The second part of DACS is concerned with creating records that establish the context in which an archival material was created, appraised, and included in an archive. There are three steps in creating these authority records: identifying the people or organizations involved in creating the record, assembling biographical data relating to those creators, and applying a standard such as Resource Description and Access to the names so that the names can be easily referenced between institutions. These authority records can then either be incorporated into metadata of an archival records or separate authority records can be created, which are then linked with the archival materials.[11]

Relation to Other Standards[edit]

While the first edition expanded on the basic rules for describing archival material that are found in chapter 4 of the deprecated library cataloging standard, Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2), the second edition of DACS more closely relates to AACR2's successor, Resource Description and Access (RDA).[12][13] DACS serves as the US implementation of international archival descriptive standards such as ISAD(G) and the International Standard Archival Authority Record. It also provides crosswalks from DACS to MARC, Encoded Archival Description (EAD), RDA, and Encoded Archival Context (EAC-CPF).[14] DACS specifies only the type of content, not the structural or encoding requirements or the actual verbiage to be used; it is therefore suitable for use in conjunction with structural and encoding standards, such as MARC and EAD, and with controlled vocabularies such as Medical Subject Headings, Library of Congress Subject Headings, Art & Architecture Thesaurus, and so on.

ISAD(G)

Records in Contexts

Encoded Archival Description

Manual of Archival Description

International Standard Archival Authority Record

Archival processing

Finding aid

DACS, 2nd edition