Multi-Level Description

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• a way of describing a group of records according to the structure of the body (administrative or personal) that created them (their external structure) and the way in which the records are arranged (their internal structure).

• Multi-level description begins with a description of the records at the broadest and most general level and then proceeds downward through its component parts, describing the records in increasingly specific terms at each level.

• Information about the records and their creators is captured in various data elements.

• The four basic rules of multi-level description are:
  1. go from the general to the specific;
  2. include only information that pertains to the level being described;
  3. do not repeat information;
  4. and provide a link between levels (though not a Canadian RAD requirement, it is recommended).

• At each level of description the archivist will record information specific to that level only. This is to avoid repeating information.

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