Per-standard archival descriptions

Heratio keeps the international archival description (ISAD(G) and RiC) in core and layers national or jurisdiction-specific standards on top through sidecar tables. This guide explains how to export and import each standard.

Supported standards

Standard	Origin	Sidecar table	Edit page
Dublin Core (Simple)	DCMI / international	none (core fields)	Description -> Dublin Core
Dublin Core Qualified	DCMI / international	none (uses `property` table)	Description -> Dublin Core
MODS 3.7	Library of Congress (US)	none (core fields + properties)	not yet edit-only; exported only
RAD	Canada	`ahg_io_rad`	(Phase 4)
DACS	United States	`ahg_io_dacs`	(Phase 4)

The sidecar approach means an ISAD(G) description always remains the canonical record; switching to RAD or DACS does not delete or replace any core data.

Exporting a single record

Visit the metadata export dashboard at /admin/metadata-export/index. Pick the standard, then the record. The download URL pattern is:

GET /admin/metadata-export/download/{format}?io={information_object_id}

{format} is one of dcterms, mods, rad, or dacs. The endpoint streams an XML file. Existing dc / EAD / EAC / MARC exports are unchanged.

Importing RAD or DACS XML

POST /admin/metadata-export/import/{format}

with either an uploaded xml_file or a xml body field. By default the call returns a JSON preview that shows every parsed record, the matched information_object id (or null), and warnings. Pass dryRun=0 (or commit=1) to persist the parsed values into the sidecar table.

The importer matches records by:

RAD: the <identifier> element looked up against information_object.identifier. Falls back to the synthetic heratio-io-{id} form Heratio uses when an IO has no manual identifier.
DACS: tries <recordIdentifier> first, then <referenceCode>.

Records that do not match an existing IO are returned in the preview with a warning and are not committed - this is intentional. RAD / DACS imports are designed to enrich existing descriptions, not to bulk-load new ones (use MARC or EAD for that).

Dublin Core qualified terms

The qualified DC export emits both legacy dc:* elements and dcterms:* refinements so downstream consumers that already speak simple DC keep working. Free-text qualified terms (e.g. dcterms:license, dcterms:bibliographicCitation) are stored in the existing property table keyed by the full predicate name (dcterms:license, dcterms:audience, etc).

MODS 3.7 coverage

Phase 3 closes most of the open MODS 3.7 outline:

<typeOfResource> maps the IO level + first digital object MIME to the LoC controlled vocabulary (still image / moving image / sound recording / text / mixed material).
<genre> carries the LCGFT authority attribute.
<language> emits both the human-readable name and the ISO 639-2b code for languages Heratio ships with (en, af, fr, de, pt, es, nl, it, zu, xh, st, tn, sn, sw).
<physicalDescription> adds <form> (from a mods:form property list) and <digitalOrigin> when a digital object exists.
<subject> now emits topic, geographic, temporal and cartographics children. Temporal / cartographics come from mods:temporal and mods:cartographics properties respectively.
<recordInfo> adds <descriptionStandard>, <recordIdentifier>, and uses the IO's actual created_at / updated_at instead of the current timestamp.

Where show-page integration lives

A toggle to pick "this collection uses RAD" on the visibility form is tracked under #98 Phase 4. Until then, switch the standard externally via the information_object.source_standard column.

Contents