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Updated by Anne Wells, October 2020. Updated by Anne Wells and Nancy Kaiser, June 2020.

Overview

General rules

Good writing and editing: Concise standard English with a kind and respectful lens is the goal. In addition to writing new description, be prepared to edit the writing of archivists who have gone before you. Sometimes editing corrects errors; sometimes it clarifies description; other times it remediates offensive language or surfaces voices previously hidden in description.

Ethical and inclusive description: We strive to use conscious language that is kind, compassionate, mindful, empowering, respectful, and inclusive.1 In regards to voice and style, we lean heavily on the thoughtful work of our peers and colleagues, especially the recommendations produced by the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP), which are listed below:

  • decenter “neutrality” and “objectivity” in favor of “respect” and “care”;
  • avoid passive voice when describing oppressive relationships;
  • use active voice in order to embed responsibility within description;
  • focus on the humanity of an individual before their identity/ies;
  • refrain from writing flowery, valorizing biographical notes for collection creators;
  • use accurate and strong language such as lynching, rape, murder, and hate mail when they are appropriate;
  • describe relationships of power when they are important for understanding the context of records. Racism, slurs, white supremacy, colonialism, and histories of oppression are important context.”2

Timeliness of description: Though we always expect to iterate our finding aids, many of them will represent their collections for years and years. If your description includes statements that talk about what someone’s doing now or where that someone currently lives or how many books she’s written, you risk your description becoming quickly outdated. You can get around this by making the description more oblique and therefore more able to endure the test of time. Some examples are:

  • 😃 In 2001, Fluffy moved to Cary, N.C., where she taught obedience classes.

  • 😃 As of 1969, she had written 18 novels about cane toads in Australia.

  • 😃 The Hamptons had 4 children, 4 dogs, 4 cats, and 4 goldfish in 2001.

Consistency: Please try to be consistent in what you call people, places, things. If she's Mary Virginia del Rio, please don't call her Mary Va. del Rio. Ever. This is important for searchability.

  • 😃 Mary Virginia del Rio.

  • 😡 Mary Va. del Rio.

Also, strive for consistency in punctuation and capitalization. You can become an expert by following a few simple rules found in the Punctuation and Capitalization sections below.

Say it and say it again: We don't expect people to read our finding aids from beginning to end. This is especially true of online finding aids, which are designed to help researchers navigate directly to descriptions of the materials of interest. Therefore, repeat important information (e.g., complete names, full titles of writings, when an event took place) in every intellectual component throughout the finding aid.

Verbosity is discouraged: You are writing description, not deathless prose. Keep it simple both in sentence structure and vocabulary choice. Again, remember that researchers don't typically read through the whole finding aid beginning to end, but seek out the parts that hold particular interest for them.

Useful Finding Aid Phrases

Because archivists do not see or touch every individual item in an archival collection, let alone examine them all closely, we want to be careful not to over- or under-sell the facts and findings in the description we write. We use a number of different phrases in the finding aid to soften the certainty of our description.

Appears to have been: William D. McDowall appears to have been a partner with Charles J. Shannon in the firm of McDowall and Shannon of Charleston, S.C.

May have been: Aritcles and writing by D. Hiden Ramsey; some may have been intended as articles for the Asheville Citizen or other publications or as speeches.

Possibly related to: Account book with entries relating chiefly to food, some show equipment purchased. Page 84 contains an "Academy" account possibly related to construction work at Vine Hill Academy.

The relationship between these materials and other materials in the collection is unclear: There are also envelopes and other papers. The relation between these materials and other materials in the collection is unclear.

Notable: Notable correspondents include Terry Sanford, Dean Smith, Christopher Fordham, many state and national politicians, and various editors and publishers.

A few: There are also a few photographs of Leavitt at various stages of his career.

Chiefly: Antebellum letters are chiefly about farming and family matters.

Scattered: About half of the undated letters were received by Louisa H. Watkins from relatives, with the bulk of the remainder addressed to her cousin George Hairston. Scattered items appear for Peter Watkins, Lizzie Hairston, and others.

Unrelated: Chiefly unrelated 19-century letters from several different states collected by James Baylor Blackford of Richmond, Va.

Loose: The collection contains loose legal papers, pertaining to cases handled by L. B. Wetmore between 1887 and 1918, including contracts, deeds, letters, handwritten notes, briefs, and copies of court filings; memo pads; attorney's pocket docket; and an account book.

A wide variety of topics: Operations material is chiefly correspondence to and from executives of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. These files deal with a wide variety of topics and provide information on the day-to-day operation of the company.

Useful structural phrases for scope and content notes:

  • The collection includes

  • There are also

  • There are (repeat as needed)

  • Also included

Includes / Contains / Consists of:

  • "Includes" is more vague; "contains" is more specific.

  • The collection includes x, y, z, and other items.

  • The collection contains x, y, and z.

  • The collection consists of x, y, and z.

Single item collections

  • The collection is a letter dated 25 January 1850 about Betsy an enslaved American child.

Abstracts, Collection Overview, Biog/Hist notes

Conscious editing

We strive to write ethical and inclusive abstracts that de-center whiteness and give voice to those historically left out of our description. In the context of antebellum collections held at UNC, this includes calling out the names of enslaved individuals whenever possible, refraining from valorizing biographical notes for collection creators, and clearly connecting family and plantation names with slavery. We do this to present history accurately, to add new access points for researchers, and to make our collection description more inclusive by emphasizing the lives and lived experiences of those documented in UNC’s collections.

We follow the A4BLiP voice and style guidelines (outlined above under Ethical and inclusive description) and consult our internal Principles for Ethical Description, recommendations for abstracts found in Descriptive Elements, and recommendations for describing Racial and ethnic identities below.

It is important to note that our recommendations and practice of using conscious language and ethical description extends well beyond the abstract. We try to embed conscious language and ethical description into all facets of our finding aid, but we emphasize these practices in relation to the abstract since this is the primary and often the first point of entry for many researchers.

The remainder of this section will focus on two core descriptive elements of our department’s ethical description and concsious editing practices in relation to the abstract. The first highlights our focus to de-center whiteness in our abstract description by identifying and characterizing individuals and groups, while the second discusses our recommendations and examples for reframing the abstract narrative away from a white and male-centered point of view and towards a more inclusive description that gives voice and visibility to those documented in the collections at UNC.

Identifying and characterizing: De-centering Whiteness

In the past, Special Collections Technical Services archivists included a substantial amount of biographical information on the creator or collector at the beginning of the abstract. This legacy description often valorized the creators and collectors and hid the voices and stories of those documented in the collection, including the names of enslaved individuals and families. In current practice, the creators and collectors are briefly identified with full names, life dates or operational dates, racial or ethnic identity, and a characterization of individuals’ occupations, communities’ connections, or organization’s purpose.

  • William R. Ferris, white folklorist, author, professor, and filmmaker of Vicksburg, Miss.

  • Roberta H. Jackson, African American professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • Helen Maynor Scheirbeck (1935-2010), a Lumbee Indian political scientist, educator, and community organizer born in Lumberton, N.C.

  • Psi Delta Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the first historically Black Greek organization established at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, organized at Poinsett County, Ark., in 1934, and founded as an interracial labor union for sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and agricultural workers.

  • Videotapes created by Judith McWillie, a white artist, author, and professor emeritus of drawing and painting at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Ga.

  • The collection of organizational records, audiovisual materials, and photographs documents the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, an organization based in Nashville, Tenn., and founded in 1966 by Bernice Johnson Reagon, an African American folklorist, singer, and civil rights activist, and Anne Romaine, a white folklorist and folk musician. The Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project (SFCRP) worked to present traditional musicians from African American and white cultures in performance together at a time when this was considered controversial. The SFCRP continued presenting musical performances throughout the South until the late 1980s, keeping close ties with the civil rights movement. -

As seen in the examples above, we list ethnic and racial identities to describe creators and collectors in the abstract. Previously we only included ethnic and racial identities for underrepresented and marginalized individuals and groups, such as African Americans or Indigenous people. Since August 2017, we have described the ethnic and racial identities of all creators and collectors so that whiteness is no longer the invisible norm. This descriptive element of identifying and characterizing creators and collectors focuses on race rather than any of the other aspects of identity such as gender, sexuality, religion, physical ability, or socio-economic status. This focus was not meant to diminish any of these aspects of identity; rather, it is a recognition that racial identity is especially significant for the collections and context at UNC-Chapel Hill.3

To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Self-identification is favored above all else. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. We strongly encourage researchers, the general public, our colleagues, and those described or the descendants of those described to please let us know when we have misidentified individuals or groups. When applicable, we use “white” as an ethnic and racial identity so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default of the people represented in our collections. We also add description of ethnic and racial identities to groups and organizations if identity is relevant currently or historically to the group. Please consult Racial and Ethnic Identities below for a list of preferred terms.

When appropriate, we also add racial and ethnic identities to key figures documented in the collection. This may include individuals or groups who have significant or meaningful ties to the creator or collector(s), such as a working relationship (e.g. business partners, project collaborators, interviewer/interviewee, documentarian/subject, mentor/mentee, etc) or when the collection contains a substantial amount of materials on specific individuals or groups.4

  • A 1990 oral history interview conducted by Molly Conrecode, a white folklorist, with Bland Simpson, a white author, playwright, songwriter, and musician, who was a member of the North Carolina string band, the Red Clay Ramblers.

  • A video recording of Piedmont blues guitarist, Etta Baker (1913-2006), created by white folklorists, Cecelia Conway and Elva Bishop. Etta Baker, born Etta Lucille Reid, claimed European, African American, and Native American ancestry. She grew up in Caldwell County, N.C., where she learned to play Piedmont blues, ragtime, and fiddle tunes from her father, Boone Reid.

  • This collection contains four account books, 1873-1903, of A. G. Davison, a white physician of Luzerne County, Pa., in which he kept records on his patients. Entries record charges for visits, prescriptions, and details of other medical care. The first volume documents that Davison had an equal partnership with white physician and druggist E. F. Kamerly in 1873. In 1874, Kamerly had three-fifths of the partnership and Davison had two-fifths. The remaining volumes do not show an apparent partnership between Davison and Kamerly. Although the first page of the third volume contains information from 1903, the rest of the volume appears to pertain to 1880-1886.

  • Recordings of the Rising Stars of Louisa Anniversary Program featuring the Rising Stars, a modern African American gospel quartet, performing at the St. Steven's Baptist Church in Stevensburg, Va. Included are congregational singing, solo gospel, and spirituals, religious testimonials, sung prayer with response, and shouts. Douglas Turner Day, a white folklorist who received his masters in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, made the recordings, presumably as part of his masters thesis research on an African American gospel program in central Virginia.

  • The collection of African American photographer Colvin M. Edwards contains approximately 48000 images from the portrait studio he owned and operated in Charlotte, N.C. A majority of the photographs depict community members of two of Charlotte's oldest historically African American neighborhoods, Beatties Ford and Biddleville, and date from the early 1940s through the late 1960s. Also included are images depicting members of local businesses, churches, groups, and schools.

Reframing the Narrative: Surfacing Voices and Stories of the Enslaved

Much of the legacy abstract description found at Wilson Special Collections Library glorifies the experiences of white individuals and groups. In the Southern Historical Collection this is most evident in our description of white antebellum southerners. While sometimes acknowledging slavery, much of the language in these finding aids centers the lives of enslavers and softens the role that white southerners played in the system of racial oppression, often obscuring the lives and lived experiences of enslaved individuals documented in the collection. More generally, our legacy description leans towards a white (often white supremacist), male, straight, and able-bodied perspective. We strive to actively reframe this narrative for both new finding aids and our conscious editing of legacy description. We do this by calling out racist actions and viewpoints and by purposefully calling out the lives and voices of those historically left out in our legacy description. We do this to make our description more inclusive and accessible and to better enable researchers to engage with the detail and scope of historical evidence.

Below are examples of our efforts to remediate legacy description to reframe the narrative and surface the voices of those previously left out of our description.

  • Example 1

Legacy description:

Prudhomme family members were planters in Natchitoches Parish, La., with interests in slaves, cotton, corn, hay, lumber, livestock, and a general store. Six generations of Prudhommes, spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, lived at Bermuda plantation (later called Oakland). Among the important members of the Prudhomme family were Phanor Prudhomme (1807-1865); his son, J. Alphonse Prudhomme I (1838-1919); his grandson, P. Phanor Prudhomme II (1865-1948); and his great grandson, J. Alphonse Prudhomme II (1896-1991), who carried on the various agricultural operations and the general store until the early 1980s; and J. Alphonse II's wife, Lucile Keator Prudhomme (1906-1994).

Edited description:

The Prudhomme family of Natchitoches Parish, La., were the French Creole owners of a plantation based on a workforce of enslaved people and later tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and day laborers, with interests in cotton, corn, hay, lumber, livestock, and a general store. Six generations of Prudhommes and enslaved people and their descendants, spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, lived at Bermuda plantation (later called Oakland).

  • Example 2

Legacy description:

The F. W. Tuttle Collection of Papers documents financial transactions concerning enslaved people, land, and other goods of the Harper family and others.

Edited description:

The Frank W. Tuttle Collection of Papers documents enslaved people, land, and other goods as financial transactions of the Harper family and others.

  • Example 3

Legacy description:

Thomas Francis Price was a farmer from Rutherford County, N.C., serving in the 56th North Carolina Volunteers. He was married to Sarah Harrill Price.

Edited description:

Thomas Francis Price and Sarah Harrill Price were married white farmers from Rutherford County, N.C. Thomas Francis Price served in the 56th North Carolina Infantry.

  • Example 4

Legacy description:

Tunstall Family Letter, 1850

Whitmell P. (Pugh) Tunstall was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. He was educated at Danville Academy and the University of North Carolina. Tunstall served in the Virginia General Assembly in both houses. He was a delegate in the House of Delegates from 1836 to 1841, a senator in the State Senate in 1841 and 1842, and a delegate again from 1845 to 1848. Tunstall was a proponent of railroads and in 1838 introduced a bill to charter the Richmond and Danville (R&D) Railroad. A charter was granted for the R&D Railroad in 1847. He was married to Mary Tunstall and they had a daughter, Mary Ellen. Whitmell P. Tunstall died in 1854 of typhoid fever, two years prior to the railroad's completion. The collection is a letter from Mrs. Mary Tunstall in Danville, Va., to her husband, Whitmell P. Tunstall, in Richmond, Va., dated 25 January 1850 in which she acknowledges receipt of his gift of a female slave child and relates her satisfaction with the child in terms of skin color and sewing capabilities.

Edited description:

Mary Tunstall Letter on Enslaved Child Betsy, 1850

The collection is a letter dated 25 January 1850 about Betsy an enslaved African American female child. Written by white Virginian Mary Tunstall from Danville, Va., to her husband white Virginia politician Whitmell P. Tunstall (1810-1854), in Richmond, Va., the letter describes the color of Betsy's skin, her sewing skills, and suitability for working in the home from the perspective of Betsy's enslaver.

Abstracts and Collection Overviews

A good way to write the abstract and collection overview:

  • Create a collection overview that concisely answers who, what, where, and when about the collection. If you have multiple series, you may be able to repurpose the series descriptions here with minor editing. The goal is a concise synthesis that makes the series arrangement clear and gives an overview of the details to be found in the series level descriptions.

  • Copy the collection overview into the abstract area (<abstract encodinganalog="520">). Edit the abstract down to the most concise form as possible.

  • You may include brief biographical/historical information to provide context for the collection but it is no longer required. (We no longer have this tag in the finding aid: <abstract encodinganalog="545">; if you come across this tag in an existing finding aid, you can remove it, with the option of adding a briefer version of the biographical information to the <abstract encodinganalog="520">)

  • Review the abstract to make sure that the necessary access points (online catalog headings) can be grounded in it.

<Bioghist> versus <Scopecontent>

<bioghist> is about the creator(s) of the materials. <scopecontent> is about the materials in the collection. It’s sometimes difficult to separate what goes in one from what goes in the other. Try for as little overlap as possible. For example, if you’re working on the papers of a creator who was involved in a particular project and the resulting materials are what’s in the collection, talk about the creator’s background in <bioghist>. You can also mention that the creator undertook the project at hand, but save the details of the project for <scopecontent>.

Here’s an example:

  • 😃 <bioghist><head>Biographical Note</head><p>Janet and Eugene Anderson are a married African American couple who are health care and civil rights activists in Rossville, Fayette County, Tenn. During the 1970s they hosted Student Health Coalition members from Nashville, Tennessee, and participated in the Poor Peoples Campaign.</p>

    <p>Janet Anderson was born 12 January 1949, in Fayette County, Tenn., and attended Fayette County schools. After high school, she went to Lane College (1967-1968) but left to get married and start a family. After her children were older, she got involved in local politics. Starting in the late 1970's, she was a county commissioner, worked as the outreach coordinator for the Tennessee Hunger Coalition, and served alongside Sister Elaine Wicks with the Poor People's Health clinic in Fayette County, Tenn. Her platforms included improving the school system, increasing voter registration, and rural healthcare.</p>

    <p>Eugene Anderson, born 3 June 1947 in Fayette County, Tenn., also attended Fayette County public schools. He joined the military and served in the Vietnam War. When he returned home, he worked in the steel industry and finished his career as a union representative for United Steelworkers.</p></bioghist>

  • 😃 <scopecontent><head>Collection Overview</head><p>The Janet Anderson and Eugene Anderson Collection documents African American life and culture in rural Fayette County, Tennessee, especially the intersection of African American health crises and civil rights concerns. The collection consists of an interview with Janet and Eugene Anderson in May 2019 in Rossville, Tennessee, and copies of newspaper clippings, photographs, and flyers that supplement their stories about African American health activism in Fayette County. Topics include Tent City (1959-1960); the Appalachian Student Health Coalition in Rossville, Tennessee; the Poor People's Health Council of Rossville, Tennessee in the late 1970s; the Original Fayette County, Tennessee Civic and Welfare League, Inc., in the early 1990s; and Janet Anderson's campaign for Fayette County Court Clerk in 1978.</p></scopecontent>

Biographical Note versus Historical Note

  • Biographical notes are about individuals and families; historical notes are about organizations.
  • If you are creating a new finding aid, the template will default to this:

`

Biographical/Historical Note

`

Be sure to delete biographical or historicial, whichever one is not appropriate for your collection.

Container Lists

Arrangement

We typically preserve the original order in which we received the materials, which often are in chronological or alphabetical order, but sometimes there is no discernible arrangement.

A good <arrangement> statement that covers almost all situations is this:

  • 😃 <arrangement><p>Arrangement: As received from donor.</p></arrangement>

If you think it will be helpful to point out to researchers, indicate that the arrangement is alphabetical, chronological, or by format.

  • 😃 <arrangement><p>Arrangement: Alphabetical, as received from donor.</p></arrangement>

If the archivist has had a hand in imposing an arrangement, be sure to note the specifics in a <processinfo> statement. See Descriptive Elements for example processing information statements.

Unittitles

Creator-generated unittitles

We privilege creator-generated unittitles. Add a processing note just before the container list begins when you are using unittitles as received (See example processing information statements in Descriptive Elements):

  • 😃 Note that original file folder titles have, for the most part, been retained.

  • 😃 The creator's/organization's original arrangement has been retained. Folder titles were derived from original folder names and from descriptive metadata found within the files by the processing archivist.

However, make the list as intelligible as you can without fretting over the contents of each unittitle. You may have to spell out abbreviations or add a clarifying last name to improve searchability. If the creator supplied an electronic version of the container list, tweaking is permissible for consistent application of our general rules for Punctuation, Capitalization.

Personal and Company names

It's okay to list names in first name, last name order or last name, first name order, but you should pick one and do it consistently throughout the listing.

  • 😃 Robert H. Bushyhead
  • 😃 Bushyhead, Robert H. (Choose this format if the archivist is creating the container list.)

Company names that include a person’s name are alphabetized by the first letter of the first word in the name.

  • 😃 J. M. Dent and Sons

Transcribing titles and captions in container lists

If an unpublished item, such as a photograph or home movie, has a title or caption written on it, we will likely want to replicate that title in the finding aid. We will want to distinguish between titles and captions that come with items (creator-generated information) from the titles and explanations that we provide (archivist-generated information). To do this, we use quotations marks. See Processing Information in Descriptive Elements section for guidance on how to communicate transparently in the finding aid about creator-generated and archivist-generated folder titles.

Note: We do not replicate racist or offensive creator-generated titles or captions in container lists. For published titles with slurs, we replace the slur with [racist slur].

Examples:

Creator-generated title

For example, a photograph with "Dey Hall, 1926" written on the back:

<unittitle><title render="doublequote">Dey Hall, 1926</title></unittitle>

` Archivist-generated title

For example, a photograph that we identify as being Dey Hall in 1926:

<unittitle>Dey Hall, 1926</unittitle>

Creator-generated title with archivist-generated clarification

For example, a photograph with "Saunders Hall" written on the back but we know that building has been re-named Carolina Hall:

<unittitle><title render="doublequote">Saunders Hall</title> (now Carolina Hall)</unittitle>

Creator-generated caption

For example, a photograph that we identify as being Dey Hall in 1926 that has "Be sure to notice the giant oak in the background" written on the back:

<unittitle>Dey Hall, 1926</unittitle></did><scopecontent><p>Caption reads: <emph render="doublequote">Be sure to notice the giant oak in the background.</emph></p></scopecontent>

Archivist-generated caption

For example, a photograph that we identify as being Dey Hall in 1926, includes a person we identify as Frank Porter Graham standing on front steps (not noted in original descriptions provided by creator):

<unittitle>Dey Hall, 1926</unittitle></did> <scopecontent><p>Image includes Frank Porter Graham.</p></scopecontent>

Mechanics

Grammar

Verb tenses: Use the present tense when referring to the papers themselves. Use the past tense when referring to actions of the creators or recipients of the papers.

  • 😃 There are three letters from John to Mary.

  • 😃 In a letter of 3 June 1870, Amos described his trip to High Point, N.C.

Punctuation

For container lists

Do not end folder titles with a period.

  • 😡 Steele, Danielle.

Use colons to show subordination. Capitalize first word after colon.

  • 😃 Missionary Society: Committee on Part-time Missionaries

  • 😃 1901: January-March

Always use commas before dates:

  • 😃 Missionary Society: Minutes, 1901-1903

  • 😃 Correspondence, 1901-1902

Use commas before locations:

  • 😃 Missionary Society: Annual meeting, Raleigh, 1902

Use colons in complex statements:

  • 😃 <title render="doublequote">How the West Was Won</title>: Missionary Society, Raleigh, 1966

  • 😃 Speech: <title render="doublequote">How the West Was Won</ title>: Civitan Club, Chapel Hill, 1960

Commas

Introductory phrases and clauses: Use a comma to set off all introductory phrases and clauses.

  • 😃 In December 1980, she totally freaked out.

  • 😃 By the following summer, she was the CEO for a leading corporation.

Terms in series: In a series of three or more terms, use a comma after each term.

  • 😃 She traveled to Raleigh, Atlanta, and Memphis.

Names as modifiers: With appositives involving names, add a comma when the full name is used. Leave the comma out when only part of a name is used.

  • 😃 His wife, Mary Johnson Smith, marched for women's suffrage in 1906.

  • 😃 His daughter Sue was an activist for civil rights in the 1930s.

Other modifiers: Use commas before and after location names used as modifiers but not before and after Jr./Sr.

  • 😃 Goodman moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., in August 1900.

  • 😃 Ken Griffey Jr. never attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Quotation marks: Commas and periods go inside quotes, while colons and semi-colons go outside quotes.

  • 😃 She called herself <emph render="doublequote">Lil,</emph> but everyone knew her as Nancy.

  • 😃 Included is the 1922 version of his unsold novel, <title render="doublequote">When Bad Things Happen to Bad People</title>; his unsold short story, <title render="doublequote">Worser and Worser</title>; and his unsold anthology, <title render="doublequote">Major Works.</title>

Dashes

Dashes should not be surrounded by spaces:

  • 😡 1983•-•1984

  • 😃 1983-1984

Spaces

One space rules: Always use ONE space after punctuation (periods, colons, whatever). In an EAD finding aid, there is never a time that you need more than one space in a row. 

  • 😡 Smith gave birth to sextuplets in 1983.••They were called:••Manny, Moe, Jack, Eloise, Heloise, and Fran.••In 1984, Smith joined the Foreign Legion.

Extra spaces in and around EAD tags: Extra spaces in and around tags are sometimes hard to see, but you must train yourself to be vigilant. These extra spaces show up in the beginning or middle of statements when the document is displayed in xml or html, resulting in too much space between words or causing misalignment of lists (e.g., online catalog terms, folder number lists, folder titles). Extra spaces at the ends of statements do not show up, but are discouraged.

  • 😡 <bioghist><head>Biographical Note</head><p> Helen Maynor Scheirbeck (1935-2010), born in Lumberton, N.C., was a political scientist, educator, and community organizer.••</p>_

  • 😡 <unittitle>•<unitdate>1922</unitdate></unittitle>

  • 😡 <c02><did><container type="folder">•1</container><unittitle>Correspondence, <unitdate type="inclusive">1920-1939</unitdate></unittitle></did></c02>

  • 😡 <c02><did><container type="folder">1</container><unittitle>•Correspondence, <unitdate type="inclusive">1920-1939</unitdate></unittitle></did></c02>

  • 😃 <c02><did><container type="folder">1</container><unittitle>Correspondence, <unitdate type="inclusive">1920-1939</unitdate></unittitle></did></c02>

Capitalization

Capitalization of container lists

Unless they are proper nouns or formal titles, only capitalize the first word of a folder title. 

  • 😃 Folder 21 Annual reports

  • 😡 Folder 21 Annual Reports

Capitalization of series (and subseries) titles: Do capitalize all of the words in a series title.

  • Series 1. Correspondence and Related Material

Capitalization of job titles: Don't capitalize job titles unless they are used as an identifier before a name.

  • She was director of the Sports Information office.

  • Robert Wagner, mayor of New York City, was there.

  • Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City was there.

Capitalizing official names of events: If the event's official name is "Great Alaska Shootout," and the event happens to be a basketball tournament, "basketball tournament" should be lowercase. But if the event's official name is "Midnight Sun Basketball Championships," all words should be capitalized.

  • Concert for Carolina benefit event

  • Atlantic Coast Conference Championships

Capitalize names of buildings:

  • Ehringhaus Dining Hall

  • Stone Center

  • South Building

  • Spencer Residence Hall

Capitalize corporate bodies:

  • Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee

  • Chancellor's Committee on Diversity

  • Carolina American Indian Caucus

  • Student Affairs Advisory Board

  • Black Student Movement

  • Board of Trustees

  • Office of Research Development

  • Carolina Latinx Center

  • Harmonyx A Cappella

Other capitalization examples:

  • African American (not hyphenated)

  • a.m.

  • American Indian or North American Indian (not hyphenated)

  • Annual reports (:rage: Annual Reports)

  • antebellum

  • Appalachia

  • army

  • Asian American (not hyphenated)

  • Battle of New Orleans, Battle of Seven Pines, Battle of First Manassas, etc.

  • Black

  • board of directors (for reasons no longer known, Board of Trustees is always capitalized but board of directors is situational)

    • 😃 As part of a title: Fayetteville and Northern Plank Road Company, Board of Directors Record Book, 1851-1866

    • 😃 As an entity: The board of directors also included Henry Theodore Bahnson, a physician from Winston-Salem, N.C.

  • civil rights

  • Civil War (capitalize when referring to the American Civil War, 1861-1865)

  • Congress

  • congressman (capitalize when it precedes a personal name)

  • federal

    • James Johnston Pettigrew was wounded and captured by federal troops.

  • General Assembly

  • Indigenous (see also North American Indian or American Indian)

  • Internet

  • Latinx

  • navy

  • North American Indian or American Indian (no longer using Native American) (see also Indigenous)

  • Normandy invasion

  • North (as a region of the United States)

    • Although Worth was convicted, Gorrell obtained for Worth a reasonable bail that allowed the abolitionist to escape to the North.

  • northern

  • northerner

  • p.m.

  • president (capitalize when it precedes a personal name)

    • At the 1960 Democratic national Convention, Terry Sanford seconded John F. Kennedy's nomination for president of the United States.

    • In this letter, President Richard M. Nixon rejected the committee's request that he turn over the tapes of "private conversations with a number of my closest aides."

  • Senate

  • senator (capitalize when it precedes a personal name)

  • South (as a region of the United States)

    • The letters describe Delia's travels from the South to New York in 1852.

  • southern

    • He wrote in detail about the daily life at Woodstock plantation, including crops, how the enslaved lived, relationships between enslaved individuals and enslavers, jobs and positions on the plantation, how the southern elite socialized, and what he called southern hospitality.

  • southerner

    • In 1866, an unidentified southerner possibly from Mobile, Ala., traveled to Brazil to investigate emigrating there.

  • Union

    • William Edminston was a corporal in the Union Army.

  • United States Army

  • United States Navy

  • United States military

  • white

  • World Wide Web

  • Yankee

PersNames, CorpNames, GeogNames

PersNames and CorpNames

Consistency: Try to be consistent in how you write names. It is often best to use the fullest version of the name first in each section of your finding aid (e.g., abstracts, biographical/historical note, collection overview, c01 series descriptions). In subsequent references within each section, you may use either the last name alone (unless this makes for unclear references) or the most-used combination of given and surname. If the appropriate name is Hetty Betty Bodine, you may refer to her as Bodine or Hetty Betty Bodine or perhaps Hetty Bodine or Hetty. Do not, however, arbitrarily start calling her Hetty B. Bodine or H. Betty Bodine or Betty (unless she went by Betty, in which case, use that name consistently).

When an individual uses initials in a personal name, place a period followed by a space after each letter.

  • J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton

Abbreviations: Usually spell out names of corporate bodies. There can be exceptions, but this will be determined on a case-by-case basis, often according to whether or not there is an authority record for a name.

  • 😃 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Use "and" instead of "&" unless you know that the authority record specifies & (remember to code any &s in EAD).

  • 😃 Smith and Company

United States or U.S.

Do not abbreviate for major government bodies and officials.

  • United States Congress

  • United States Senate

  • United States Senator

  • United States Representative

  • United States Supreme Court

Abbreviate for lesser government bodies and for military units

  • U.S. War Labor Board

  • U.S. Farm Security Administration

  • U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Racial and Ethnic Identities

In our abstracts we list out racial and ethnic identities of creator, collectors, and major figures documented in collections so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default of the people represented in our collections (please see the Conscious editing section of this Style Guide and the abstract section of Descriptive Elements for more on this established practice). Below is a list of preferred racial and ethnic identity terms to describe an individual or group of individuals. This is an evolving and living list of recommendations. It is not exhaustive. We consulted our colleagues and peers, including the “The Diversity Style Guide”, when compiling these recommended racial and ethnic identities.5 Please note that we do not hyphenate racial and ethnic identities and that we capitalize all identities, except for “white”. As noted in the Identifying and characterizing: Decentering Whiteness section of this Style Guide, we favor self-identification above all else. We also encourage those described or the descendants of those described to please let us know how they would like to be identified and/or when we have misidentified individuals or groups.

  • African

  • African American

  • Afro-Caribbean

  • American Indian or North American Indian (no longer using Native American; preferably we would use specifics when available: Coharie Indian; Haliwa-Saponi Indian; Lumbee Indian; Tuscarora Indian)

  • Asian American

  • Black

  • Cambodian American

  • Central Asian

  • Chinese American

  • Coharie Indian

  • Croatan, or Croatoan [use only when referring to Indigenous peoples of the Hatteras and Roanoke Islands in the late 16th century, a title, or the proper name of a geographical feature or location.] (For more information see "Investigation of misuse of 'Croatan' (or 'Croatoan') as an identity term for Lumbee, Tuscarora, and other Indigenous people, Fall 2022-Summer 2023" in Inclusive Description Projects.)

  • Creole

  • Cuban

  • Cuban American

  • East Indian Americans

  • Greek American

  • Haitian American

  • Haliwa-Saponi Indian

  • Hispanic [stick to Latinx?]

  • Indigenous (see also American Indian and North American Indian)

  • Japanese American

  • Jewish

  • Jewish American

  • Latinx

  • Lumbee Indian

  • Mexican American

  • Montagnard

  • Multiracial American [preferably list out: European, African American, and Native American ancestry.]

  • North American Indian or American Indian [no longer using Native American; preferably we would use specifics when available: Coharie Indian; Haliwa-Saponi Indian; Lumbee Indian; Tuscarora Indian] (see also Indigenous)

  • South Asian

  • Tuscarora Indian

  • Vietnamese American

  • white

We acknowledge that race and ethnic identity is only one facet of an individual’s or group of individuals’ identity and that above all else we must emphasize the humanity of those being described. We do this through voice and style. An example from the A4BLiP:

Consider the difference between “documents the business dealings of a Black woman named Maria in 18th century Mexico” and “documents the business dealings of Maria, a Black woman in 18th century Mexico.6

Additional examples from UNC finding aids below:

  • William R. Ferris, white folklorist, author, professor, and filmmaker of Vicksburg, Miss.

  • Roberta H. Jackson, African American professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • Helen Maynor Scheirbeck (1935-2010), a Lumbee Indian political scientist, educator, and community organizer born in Lumberton, N.C.

  • Psi Delta Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the first historically Black Greek organization established at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • Videotapes created by Judith McWillie, a white artist, author, and professor emeritus of drawing and painting at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Ga.

  • Etta Baker, born Etta Lucille Reid, claimed European, African American, and Native American ancestry.

  • Interview conducted by Molly Conrecode, a white folklorist, with Bland Simpson, a white author, playwright, songwriter, and musician, who was a member of the North Carolina string band, the Red Clay Ramblers.

GeogNames

Abbreviate a state name when it directly follows the name of a city or a county (parish). Otherwise spell out the name of the state.

Abbreviations: Always use the approved Library of Congress state abbreviations when the state is a modifier. Note that these are NOT the 2-letter standard United States Post Office abbreviations. Note also that there is no space between N. and C. (N.C.) or S. and C. (S.C.) or W. and Va. (W.Va.).

  • 😃 Chapel Hill, N.C.

  • 😃 Little Rock, Ark.

State abbreviations: Alabama: Ala., Alaska: Alaska, Arizona: Ariz., Arkansas: Ark., California: Calif., Colorado: Colo., Connecticut: Conn., Delaware: Del., District of Columbia: D.C., Florida: Fla., Georgia: Ga., Hawaii: Hawaii, Idaho: Idaho, Illinois: Ill., Indiana: Ind., Iowa: Iowa, Kansas: Kans., Kentucky: Ky., Louisiana: La., Maine: Me., Maryland: Md., Massachusetts: Mass., Michigan: Mich., Minnesota: Minn., Mississippi: Miss., Missouri: Mo., Montana: Mont., Nebraska: Neb., Nevada: Nev., New Hampshire: N.H., New Jersey: N.J., New Mexico: N.M, New York: N.Y., North Carolina: N.C., North Dakota: N.D., Ohio: Ohio, Oklahoma: Okla., Oregon: Or., Pennsylvania: Pa., Puerto Rico: P.R., Rhode Island: R.I., South Carolina: S.C., South Dakota: S.D., Tennessee: Tenn., Texas: Tex., Utah: Utah, Vermont: Vt., Virginia: Va., Virgin Islands: V.I., Washington: Wash., West Virginia: W.Va., Wisconsin: Wis., Wyoming: Wyo.

Places as part of name: Always spell out state names when they are part of a name. This also goes for the United States.

  • 😃 North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research

  • 😃 West Virginia Prison for Women

  • 😃 United States Senate

Stand-alones: Always spell out state names when they stand alone. This also goes for the United States.

  • 😃 She is a native of North Carolina.

  • 😃 They came to the United States in 1856.

Titles, Dates, Numbers

Titles

Use <title> tags to add italics or quotation marks to formal titles; use <emph> tags to add bold, italic, or quotation marks in all other cases.

Italics: Use italics for published books, pamphlets; proceedings, collections of materials (e.g., short story collections, poetry collections), long poems, periodicals, and newspapers (including newspaper sections published separately). Also use italics for motion pictures; major musical works (e.g., operas, symphonies), paintings, drawings, statues, and other works of art. Make sure the </title> tag comes before any ending punctuation. 

  • 😃 In his <title render="italic">Dictionary of North Carolina Biography</title>, Powell ...

  • 😃 Her column appeared in the <title render="italic">Charlotte News</title>, 1942-1953.

  • 😃 He wrote extensively about seeing a production of <title render="italic">The Emperor Jones</title> in 1939.

Quotation marks: Use quotation marks for theses, dissertations, short stories, short poems, chapters, journal and newspaper articles, columns, and all unpublished works regardless of length. Make sure the </title> tag comes before or after punctuation as appropriate.

  • 😃 His novel, <title render="doublequote">Wilder West,</title> was never published.

  • 😃 Her column, <title render="doublequote">Little Moi,</title> appeared in the <title render="italic">Chapel Hill Messenger</title>, 1909-1910.

  • 😃 His poem, <title render="doublequote">Now There Are None</title> won the Minor Poets of Portland award in 1902.

<Title> versus <Emph>

<title> and <emph> result in the same outputs to the screen, but they're not the same intellectually. <title> is for titles, italic or quoted; <emph> supplies italic or quotation marks in all other cases. Most of the time, you'll have a title. Examples of correct <emph> usage include:

  • 😃 In the letter from Gettysburg, Penn., dated 3 July 1863, he wrote, <emph render="doublequote">What the <emph render="italic">HELL</emph> am I doing here?</emph>

  • 😃 Her name was McGill, and she called herself <emph render="doublequote">Lil,</emph> but everyone knew her as <emph render="doublequote">Nancy.</emph>

Dates

General:

Date Month Year, no commas, please.

  • 😃 23 April 1876

  • 😃 April 1876

Centuries: Use Arabic numerals for centuries. Include a hyphen if the century is used as an adjective.

  • 😃 19th century

  • 😃 20th century

  • 😃 18th-century politics

Numberical representations of centuries DO NOT have an apostrophe.

  • 😃 1800s NOT 1800's

Date spans: Never use a from without a to.

  • 😡 She was fire chief from 1906-1920.

  • 😃 She was fire chief from 1906 to 1920.

  • 😃 She was fire chief, 1906-1920.

Life dates: You should provide life dates for individuals highlighted in your descriptions. The life dates in parentheses should follow the first mention of the person's name.

  • Use b. (abbreviation for born) to indicate that only a birth date is known or if the person is possibly still living.

  • Use d. (abbreviation for died) to indicate that only a death date is known.

  • Use "active" when neither a birth or death date is known but evidence shows that a person was active (previously known as "flourished") during those dates.

Numbers

Use numerals for centuries.

  • 😃 She was the first woman to win the prize in the 20th century.

Use numerals for troop numbers.

  • 😃 He served with the 1st North Carolina Volunteers.

Spell out numbers 1-12 when they appear singly in text. Use numerals when they represent a numerical span.

  • 😃 She is known to have eaten twelve blueberry pies at the 1907 state fair.

  • 😃 Spell out numbers 1-12 when they appear singly in text.

Spell out numbers when they appear at the beginning of sentences (or reconstruct the sentence so that the number does not come first).

  • 😃 One hundred years later, he was still eating blueberry pie.

Miscellaneous

University of North Carolina: Our institution is currently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It has been so since 1963. Any materials relating to this institution through 1962 are from the University of North Carolina. For the earlier period, you can also say University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill or University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill if you like. Use the appropriate full form of the name the first time it is mentioned in each section. For subsequent mentions within sections, you can use UNC or UNC-Chapel Hill as appropriate.

  • 😡 UNC-CH.

Chair and chairman: If we agree to use chair for both males and females, we cannot go wrong.

Correspondence: Correspondence means an exchange of letters. If we say, Also included is correspondence between Amos Trevellyan and his daughter Alma, we mean that there are letters from Amos to Alma as AND letters from Alma to Amos. Do not use correspondence when there are letters going only one way. If the collection includes chiefly incoming letters and only a few outgoing letters, which may or may not be paired together, correspondence is still the correct term.

  • 😡 Included is correspondence Rankin received from supporters.

  • 😃 Included are letters Rankin received from supporters.

Copies: Be precise and clear when referring to copies as opposed to original items. Acceptable terms include typed transcriptions, carbon copies, photocopies, photocopies of typed transcriptions, handwritten copies, and dubs (for audiovisual materials). Avoid vague terms (e.g., copies). 

Endnotes

Footnotes

  1. Luster, Dominique, Abdi Roble, Ellen Engseth, and Athena Jackson. “Culture, Competencies, and Colleagues:a Cafe on divers*” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Portland, OR, July 2017. ↩

  2. Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP), “Anti-Racist Description Resources”, October 2019. Accessed November 2019: 3-4. https://archivesforblacklives.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ardr_final.pdf. ↩

  3. Jackie Dean, “Conscious Editing of Archival Description at UNC-Chapel Hill.” Journal for the Society of the North Carolina Archivists, vol. 16 (2019): 49. http://www.ncarchivists.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/jsnca_vol16_dean.pdf. ↩

  4. Laura Hart, “Abstracts for Collection Records” powerpoint, 2020. ↩

  5. "The Diversity Style Guide," 2020. Accessed April 2020. https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/. ↩

  6. Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP), “Anti-Racist Description Resources”, October 2019. Accessed November 2019: 4. https://archivesforblacklives.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ardr_final.pdf. ↩