Semantic and Interoperability Problems of Contemporary Archival Descriptions

In archival theory and practice various on-line archival information systems are developed with different types of contemporary archival descriptions. Despite the fact that there are internationally accepted professional standards for archival description, in practice there are major discrepancies between realizations of descriptions and their standardized forms. The paper presents the results of analysis of more than 20 such systems. No significant differences are observed on technical-technological level, whereas on syntactic and semantic level many problems are identified. This causes some fundamental archival scientific problems. Among them is the question whether data structures of considered archival information systems are compatible with each other in the context of exchange of information on international level. Some indicators show that achieving this goal demands major interventions in individual archival information system and therefore has a direct negative impact on the cost of target record production.