Abstract
Standardization of descriptive practice supports improved access to archival collections with sound recordings of music, but the standard for archival description in the United States, Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), does not supply specific rules for describing music sound recordings. Instead, it recommends supplementary standards without indicating how to incorporate them in a DACS-compliant finding aid. Given the wide range of descriptive options available via this recommendation, this exploratory study evaluates the extent to which finding aids for music collections with sound recordings successfully follow DACS, both in overall compliance and in the application of The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) Cataloguing Rules, the only supplemental standard recommended by DACS that covers music sound recordings. Drawing from a randomized, purposive sample of 20 finding aids for music collections at 11 repositories, this study applies document analysis to establish common reasons for non-compliance and evaluates the elements required by DACS in each finding aid. The results show low compliance with DACS and that the finding aids in the study commonly fail to apply IASA’s Rules correctly in description of music sound recordings.