Who's Ready to Surf the Next Wave? A Study of Perceived Challenges to Implementing New and Revised Standards for Archival Description

Archivists in the United States must grapple with many changes to archival descriptive standards in the next few years, including major revisions to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) and Encoded Archival Description (EAD), widespread adoption of the Encoded Archival Context for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) standard, and harmonization of those standards with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Resource Description and Access (RDA). This study aims to measure the degree to which archivists are prepared to cope with this evolution in descriptive practices. Archivists were asked to complete a survey aimed at identifying and analyzing their familiarity with these standards and assessing perceptions of their readiness to adapt workflows and systems to changes in those standards. In particular, the survey targeted perceptions of possible technical challenges and pressures on current resources that may impede adoption of new and revised descriptive standards. The results of this research will help the archival community anticipate and plan for ways of addressing perceived obstacles, thus encouraging proactive management of changes in policies and procedures for archival description.