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SAA's Standards Portal is designed to educate the archives community about the value and role of standards, enhance the application of standards to practice, and facilitate successful partnerships with related information standards organizations with mutual concerns and interests. The portal includes SAA-approved standards, guidelines, and best practice documents. The Society's long-term goal is to establish a comprehensive clearinghouse that includes contextual information to assist archivists and allied professionals in moving these, and other external standards, from theory into practice.
Provides guidance on site evaluation and construction of archival facilities that meet the needs of staff and researchers to ensure the preservation of archival collections.
This document presents best practices for administrators, hiring managers, and supervisors to put into action when planning for and employing archival term positions. At the foundation of this document is the recognition that temporary labor is detrimental to employees, as well as to sustainable and holistic collection stewardship.
Suggested guidelines for graduate students, archival educators, and archivists serving as intern supervisors.
Suggested guidelines for archives institutions and organizations about the use of volunteers; of interest to individuals who are considering volunteer work in an archives institution or organization.
These Guidelines provide recommendations and suggest resources to helparchivists provide services and spaces that are accessible and inclusive. They encourage respect for each person's right of physical control of their own body, assistive devices and related accommodations.
These guidelines discuss the definition of college and university archives, as well as the administrative relationships, records management, core archival functions, facilities and equipment, and supporting services involved.
Provides an objective and consistent framework against which archives can measure their development, recognizing the diversity of both archival institutions and archival media.
These guidelines were developed to provide archivists and special collections librarians with a set of practical, well-defined counts and measures that can be used to quantify and communicate holdings information.
Assists all types of museums—both independent museums and those contained within larger institutions—in the development and administration of archives programs. The document outlines the components of a successful museum archives program.
Developed to help archival repositories and special collections libraries quantify in meaningful terms the services they provide their constituencies and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the operations that support those services.
Establishes a step-by-step approach to reappraisal and deaccessioning in archival repositories and outlines general steps, problems, and solutions yielding responsible and ethical reappraisal and deaccessioning decisions.
An output-neutral set of rules for describing archives, personal papers, and manuscript collections that can be applied to all material types, DACS represents the U.S. implementation of international standards (i.e., ISAD[G] and ISAAR[CPF]) for the description of archival materials and their creators.
Maintained by SAA in partnership with the Berlin State Library, the EAC-CPF Schema is a standard for encoding contextual information about persons, corporate bodies, and families related to archival materials using Extensible Markup Language (XML).
Encoded Archival Description is a non-proprietary standard for the encoding of finding aids for use in a networked (online) environment.
The Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies serve as a benchmark against which graduate programs in archival studies may be measured. These guidelines establish minimum standards for archival education programs in terms of mission, curriculum, faculty, and infrastructure.
The purpose of these guidelines, developed for individuals and organizations that provide or sponsor archival continuing education, is to encourage the creation of opportunities for lifelong learning within the archival community.
Describes what professional archivists consider to be best practices regarding reasonable efforts to identify and locate rights holders. "Orphan works" is a term used to describe the situation in which the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of the copyright owner.
These guidelines articulate the range of knowledge, skills, and abilities required to effectively use primary sources.
Outlines the responsibilities for researcher access, as well as legal and institutional obligations, of a repository in preserving collections for use.
These Guidelines provide recommendations and suggest resources to helparchivists provide services and spaces that are accessible and inclusive. They encourage respect for each person's right of physical control of their own body, assistive devices and related accommodations.
The Standards Portal is maintained by the SAA Standards Committee.
SAA Members: Contribute related resources (e.g., journal articles, case studies, etc.) by using the links at the bottom of listed standards.
Developed with support from