Archives and Manuscript Control with Bibliographic Utilities: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The MARC Format for Archives and Manuscript Control (MARC-AMC) was designed with the potential for recording a broad range of information and contains structures for a variety of implementations. These hidden potentials are being explored in its implementation within national bibliographic networks, especially within the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) by the Seven States Project. The AMC format has the potential both to support successful automation of archival control and to transform the bibliographic utilities as we know them today. Specifically, AMC overthrows the bibliocentricism, the political hegemony, and the existing financial/functional underpinnings of the bibliographic networks. It opens the ways to multimedia cultural information systems and new local/national systems architectures. As a consequence, archivists are likely to play a critical role in redesigning library information networks in the decades to come.