Bibliographical Description and Classification Indexing For Revolutionary Historical Archives in China(2)

중국의 혁명역사기록물의 목록기술과 검색분류(2)

Bibliographical Description for Revolutionary Historical Archives is created to describe records at the item level. It defines descriptive elements, punctuations, formats and methods. Descriptive elements are composed of 20 elements, each of which is either mandatory or optional. Mandatory elements are: repositories codes, documents codes, dates, creators, title, classification codes, and subject vocabularies. Abstracts were previously included in card cataloging and are removed in the computerized system. New elements, such as "uncontrolled vocabularies," "name of places," "personal names," "organizational structures" and "meetings," are added to allow keyword search. Considering that subject vocabulary searches are the most important in computerized systems, however, Guidelines for the Subject Indexing for Revolutionary Historical Archives as well as Subject Headings, as a result from the Guidelines, are created. The most extraordinary features in Chinese archival description are said to be the Guidelines for the Classification Indexing for Revolutionary Historical Archives and Materials as well as the Classification Scheme, both of which are created to allow subject search of records content. It is because Chinese practice of records management distinguishes the classification for arrangement from that for retrieval. Chinese archival description is, therefore, composed of bibliographic description rules, subject headings, and the classification scheme for retrieval.