When Archival Description Meets Digital Object Metadata: A Typological Study of Digital Archival Representation

The relationship between archival description and descriptive metadata of digital objects has not been explicitly discussed in the literature. The discussion will enhance our understanding of the relationship between archival context and digital content, a significant topic in a networked digital environment. The data collected in this study show that archivists have made conscious efforts to build connections between archival description (context) and digital items (content), and, as a result, distinct representation models have emerged from digital archival practice. However, at the level of integration of archival context and digital content in digital archival representation, archivists are challenged to achieve an ultimate goal of making digital archives more accessible and better contextualized in the digital world.