Authority records
Describes corporate bodies, persons or families that are associated with the creation and maintenance of archives, such as creator, donor or custodian.
ESSArch adheres to ISAAR (CPF), 2nd Edition and comes with a standard set of controlled vocabularies for typed fields which can be customized or supplemented by additional values.
Authority Records are created and controlled separately from archival (resource) descriptions in ESSArch and are associated by linking.
By default there is three main types of Authority records in ESSArch:
Person
Family
Corporate Body
These three main types can be further subdivided by the organization needs or other requirements of subdivision i.e.
Corporate body - State agency
Family - Royal Family
The ICA Standards section provides a detailed documentation of the entry fields of an authority record in ESSArch, their relation to ISAAR-CPF and default values available from a standard installation.
Creating and managing authority records
Warning
Be careful when updating Authority records! Updating of an Authority record changes it for every link to the referenced record.
Creating a new authority record
A new authority record can be created by clicking the new button under the authority record section of ESSArch.
When initially creating an authority record the following fields are required for all types of authority records:
Type
Name (Authorized form)
Language
Reference code (institutional code)
Create date (Auto populated)
New authority record form
Note
For Authority records of type person the name field is automatically separated into Firstname and Lastname fields.
Detail view of newly created authority record
Adding other name forms
By clicking the add button in the names subsection one can record additional name forms. i.e. Parallel forms of name, Standardized forms of name according to other rules and Other forms of name.
After the additional name form has been saved the record is available under the Names section.
Adding history, descriptive texts and notes
In ESSArch one can have multiple descriptive texts / notes.
Warning
Custom note types will in future EAC exports be exported as <maintenanceEvent> !
Standard type of notes that can be used in ESSArch:
Biography/History
Maintenance
Internal structures
Genealogy
General context
To add a new descriptive text click on the History or Remarks tab and then the add button.
From the dropdown menu choose the appropriate note type, add text and click add to save.
Creating relations
Relationships with other corporate bodies, persons and families can be described by linking authority records.
Relationship types in ESSArch are mirrored which means that if a relation is created on one authority record the relation will automatically be mirrored when viewing the referenced authority record.
Type |
Mirrored Type |
business partner |
business partner |
successor |
predecessor |
predecessor |
successor |
owned by |
owner of |
owner of |
owned by |
controlling |
controlled |
controlled |
controlling |
subordinate |
superior |
superior |
subordinate |
To add a relation from one authority record to another click the add button in the related authority records section.
