Statement on Standards Alignment

The standards maintained by the Society of American Archivists' Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) are XML-schemas based on established models developed by the International Council on Archives (ICA). Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is based on the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)), while Encoded Archival Context for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) is based on the International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families (ISAAR-CPF). The current revisions to the EAD and EAC-CPF standards are being undertaken by TS-EAS based on the requirements of the Society of American Archivists' standards maintenance schedule and policies, and are not tied to ongoing development of standards by the ICA, though keeping close connections to the ICA Experts Group on Archival Description as a related standards body. For this reason, the upcoming release of EAC-CPF 2.0 will continue to be based on ISAAR-CPF rather than the draft versions of Records in Contexts (RiC).

The new released update of EAC-CPF version 2.0 is based upon ISAAR-CPF. Some considerations in the development of the new version of EAC-CPF regarding the Records in Contexts (RiC) have been made. For example, it is now possible to describe other entities besides persons, families and corporate bodies like it is possible in RiC. There have been adaptations of value lists and especially the value list regarding relations to other described entities like authoritative records or a finding aid following the relations possible in RiC.

When the RiC Conceptual Model is finalized and approved by ICA we anticipate that future versions of EAC-CPF and other standards maintained by TS-EAS will take the RiC Conceptual Model into account.