Policy on Subject, Space, Place Names, and Function Headings

Created by Amanda Tome, last modified by Kelli Babcock on Mar 07, 2023

Policy under review

Repositories should not use subject, place, or function access points at this point in time. St. Michael’s College Archival & Manuscript Collections is the exception to this rule, as their original descriptions already included subject headings. The Discover Archives help page/user guide should make it clear that subject headings are only being used by that one repository.

• Names can be added as subject access points at any level of description.

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As a result of a February 2020 iSchool UX survey, and timing with the PCC Wikidata Pilot project, a group of Discover Archives archivists and ITS explored how to apply access points in Discover Archives. The resulting research was published in 2022:

Ansovini, Daniela, Kelli Babcock, Tanis Franco, Jiyun Alex Jung, Karen Suurtamm, and Alexandra Wong. 2022. “Knowledge Lost, Knowledge Gained: The Implications of Migrating to Online Archival Descriptive Systems”. KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 6 (3): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.234