Introduction

• This page includes links to freely available glossaries of archives and records terminology.

Glossaries

• Dalhousie Libraries Documentation Wiki: Glossary: This glossary supports documentation published in the Dalhousie Libraries' Documentation Wiki, including the Archives Procedure Manual and the Libraries' Digitization Handbook.

• Dictionary of Archives Terminology: Contains more than 2,000 defined entries based primarily on archival literature in the United States and Canada. Published by the Society of American Archivists.

• Rules for Archival Description: Appendix D (Glossary): Contains definitions of most of the archival terms used in the Rules for Archival Description.

• InterPARES Trust Terminology Database: The InterPARES Trust Terminology is a vocabulary drawn from the emerging and evolving intersection of recordkeeping and information technology. It continues the work of previous InterPARES projects, by exploring aspects of trust in cloud environments. Established social conventions of trusting archives has been based in large part on the notion of tangible records in the custody of an archival repository. If an archives delegates custody of its records to a third party, such as a cloud service provider, the assumptions underlying those social conventions have changed and should be re-examined.

  This terminology is a starting point to clarify the meaning of the words and phrases that represent fundamental concepts being examined. The meaning of terms representing relatively new concepts are often ambiguous because it is not yet well-established and it may be used with a variety of senses. Over time, especially as the implications and implementations of these new concepts mature, a consensual meaning emerges. For example, when first introduced, “cloud” was particularly nebulous. Some argued that it was merely a new word for existing technologies such as distributed storage. Others argued that it was substantially different, incorporating notions of storage as a service independent of implementation. Marketers often used “cloud” to promote existing products and services as new and innovative. In the past several years, the notion of cloud computing has been clarified and expanded.