Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

4. Session / Séance. Strategies for Links with Historical Research / Stratégies de Communication envers la Recherche historique - Gonzalez, Pedro: Data Bases and Long Distance Communication. A Spanish Éxperience / Bases de données et information a distance. Une expérience des archives espagnoles (english 319 - français 343)

2. Trends towards Standardization

In order to facilitate the forms of information exchange which we have been discussing, progressive advances are being made in the extension of technical standards for general use. We have quoted a number of them, within the broad sphere of standards issued by diverse organizations, which should fit within the most general standard, issued by the ISO in 1979 (ISO 7498), which endeavours to permit the creation of open communication systems through the OSI reference model (Open Systems Interconnection), regulating the exchange of information between networks and systems created by different manufacturers.

The OSI model defines seven levels between which communication takes place: they go from the physical level (Level 1), which controls the physical linking between networks, up to the application level (Level 7) which provides communication media for user application programmes. Each level uses the services provided by the lower levels and in turn provides services to the upper levels. The use of these standards enables different systems to inter-communicate, acting as a filter which transforms data from the sender system into an intelligible format through the receiver system.

Adopting the levels of the OSI reference model, there exists a set of standards worked out by different bodies, which are used by the manufacturers of hardware and software and attempt to eliminate problems of incompatibility between information. In particular, the standards relating to the last two levels are of special interest for the exchange of archival information: Presentation and Application (ODA/ODIF, FT AM, DTAM, etc.).

An additional benefit for Archives, apart from facilitating the exchange of information, will be that of enabling new systems to migrate in order to solve the problem of obsolescence and preserve information long term, with as little dependence as possible upon hardware and software manufacturers7.

In any case, the OSI Reference Model provides the basis for standardization of information exchange, but does not intervene at the level of each user’s specific programmes nor, of course, in the purely archival tasks prior to the creation of data bases such as Description8. No generally accepted standards exist for the creation of programmes for computerizing archival tasks such as, for example, monitoring the

4. Session/Séance: Gonzalez, Data Bases and long distance Communcation

7 A summary of the situation on Standards and specifically those relating to the OSI, connected with the Archives, was already done some years ago by Charles Dollar and Thomas E. Weir, Jr.: Archives Administration, Records Management and Computer Data Exchange Standards: An Intersection of Practices. Washington, NARA, 20 p. Another revision is included in: United Nations. Management of Electronic Records. Prepared by The Advisory Committee for the Co-ordination of Information Systems (ACCIS). New York 1990.

8 The Ad-Hoc-Commission for Descriptive Standards for Archives, organized by the International Council of Archives under the auspices of Unesco, in their meetings at Höhr-Grenzhausen (Germany, 1990) and Madrid (January, 1992), produced the text of a general declaration of principles on archival description, „Statement of Principles regarding the Archival Description“ and a draft on General Standards of Description: „ISAD (G) International Standard Archival Description“. The „Statement of Principles“ was approved by the Montreal International Congress (September, 1992).

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