ICAISAD(G) is the foundational international standard for archival description, establishing the principles and elements that underpin how archives are cataloged and made discoverable worldwide. Published by the International Council on Archives (ICA), it provides a common framework that has been adopted or adapted by national archival communities across multiple continents.
Background
The advent of the internet and electronic records in the late 1980s created a need to standardize archival descriptions for interoperability across institutions and borders. With UNESCO support, initial work began in 1988 through a subgroup of the ICA's Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards, which discussed the first draft beginning in 1990. The ICA adopted the first version at its Congress in 1994. An evaluation conducted in 1999 examined the standard's effectiveness for describing datasets and assessed how it was being used in data archives. The ICA published a revised second edition in 2000 -- sometimes abbreviated as ISAD(G)2 -- which remains the current version.
Purpose and Scope
ISAD(G) defines the elements and rules for describing archives created by corporations, persons, and families. It is designed as a flexible framework rather than a rigid format, establishing what information should be included in archival finding aids and at what level of the descriptive hierarchy. The standard applies to all types of archival material regardless of form or medium.
Key Principles
The standard is built on four general principles:
- Multilevel description -- proceeding from the general (fonds) to the specific (item), through subfonds, series, and files
- Information relevant to the level -- each description level contains only information pertinent to that level of the archival unit
- Linking of descriptions -- every unit must be linked to its parent level, with its position in the hierarchy made explicit
- Non-repetition -- common information is declared at the highest applicable level to avoid redundancy in child levels
Elements of Description
ISAD(G) defines 26 data elements organized into seven areas. Six elements are considered essential:
| Area | Elements | Essential |
|---|---|---|
| Identity Statement | Reference codes, Title, Date, Level of description, Extent and medium | All five |
| Context | Name of creator, Administrative/biographical history, Archival history, Immediate source of acquisition | Name of creator |
| Content and Structure | Scope and content, Appraisal/destruction/scheduling, Accruals, System of arrangement | -- |
| Conditions of Access and Use | Access conditions, Reproduction conditions, Language/scripts, Physical characteristics, Finding aids | -- |
| Allied Materials | Existence/location of originals, Existence/location of copies, Related units, Publication note | -- |
| Notes | Note | -- |
| Description Control | Archivist's note, Rules or conventions, Date(s) of descriptions | -- |
Adoption
ISAD(G) has been widely adopted by national and international institutions:
- United States -- implemented through Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS, 2006) by the Society of American Archivists
- United Kingdom -- adopted by The National Archives Cataloguing Standards in 2000
- Canada -- implemented alongside ISAAR(CPF) in the second edition of Rules for Archival Description (RAD2, 2005) by the Canadian Council on Archives
- Brazil -- adopted by the Conselho Nacional de Arquivos (Conarq) and implemented in the Norma Brasileira de Descricao Arquivistica (NOBRADE, 2006)
- World Bank Group -- uses ISAD(G) with EAD XML schemas for archival records, arranged into fonds with metadata following ISAD(G) elements
- UNESCO -- organizes archives using the AtoM database adhering to ISAD(G)
Compatibility with Other Standards
ISAD(G) is complementary to several other standards and formats. Encoded Archival Description (EAD) uses XML schemas to encode content descriptions mapped to ISAD(G) elements and hierarchical relationships. While ISAD(G) is less specific than EAD regarding finding aid data, it provides a useful model for determining essential elements and appropriate descriptive detail at each hierarchical level. The standard has also been mapped to Dublin Core and is designed to work alongside ISAAR(CPF) for archival authority records and ISO 15489 for records management.
Governance and Maintenance
The standard is published by the International Council on Archives. The ICA's Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards developed the original, succeeded by the Committee on Best Practices and Standards (CBPS), and now the Expert Group on Archival Description (EGAD). ISAD(G) is being conceptually superseded by Records in Contexts (RiC), a next-generation framework that adopts a graph-based model rather than the strictly hierarchical approach.
Related Standards
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) -- US implementation of ISAD(G) principles
- Encoded Archival Description (EAD) -- XML encoding standard compatible with ISAD(G)
- ISAAR(CPF) -- companion ICA standard for archival authority records of corporate bodies, persons, and families
- Records in Contexts (RiC) -- the ICA's next-generation archival description framework