Shared Vocabularies

Subject area/Theme: 

Data and Architecture: Data Archiving

Short summary of Best Practice:

Interoperable archives archivists should use a same glossary of terms and definitions applicable to data archiving.

Explain why is there a need for this Best Practice?

Archive agencies share the same concern - long term data preservation - and they share the same problems, like the handling huge amounts of data, or the organization of data migration from one storage device to another one. Using a shared vocabulary in the complex field of data archiving contributes to a better understanding and easier solving of all these problems.

Provide an example application(s):

Not given 

How widely deployed is this practice(if applicable)? 

Unknown  

Source document(s):

CEOS WGISS Interoperability Handbook

Detailed Description of Best Practice

CEOS has agreed to use a subset, suitable for digital archives, of the “Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology”, published by the Society of American Archivists. 

This subset is available at : http://wgiss.ceos.org/archive.
The full glossary is available at the same address and at: http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp5.