Archive
Cataloguing Standards
The National Monuments Record of Wales’ record catalogue has developed to reflect the uniquely specialised nature of our holdings and has hitherto been designed primarily to work in concert with our digital site database, which forms an index to related archive records across a range of collections.
However, the National Monuments Record of Wales is cognisant of accepted professional standards for archival description, in particular the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)), which is internationally recognised and has become the most widely embraced standard amongst archives in the UK. This standard sets out a hierarchical model for the descriptive cataloguing of archives, and previously the National Monuments Record of Wales’ archive catalogue has featured some hierarchical elements, though it has not adopted a comprehensive ISAD(G)-based approach. We intend to organise our record catalogue in a fully hierarchical manner and introduce many more of the Standard’s descriptive elements. Planning is currently underway to upgrade our archive catalogue along these lines, and the target period for this development is April 2007.
Further information about ISAD(G), including a downloadable version of the full standard, can be obtained from the International Council on Archives via the link on this page.
Storage Standards
The NMRW is recognised as an official place of deposit for public records by the National Archives (TNA) and consequently must provide an acceptable standard of controlled archival storage. As far as possible, we endeavour to adhere to the British Standard for this, BS5454, which can be purchased from the British Standards Institute. Most of our archive stores utilise close-control air conditioning, which maintains both the temperature and relative humidity inside the stores within narrow bands around set points, as follows:
Temperature set point 15 degrees Celsius, within a band of +/- 2 degrees.
Relative humidity set point 45% RH, within a band of +/- 5%.
As far as possible, we use acid-free and chemically inert storage mediums, and do not allow original archive items to leave the building.
For information concerning standards for the cataloguing and storage of digital archive records, please see Standards: Digitisation.