gla.erm/pua/procridcodes/1998-02-17/5

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

Effective Records Management Project

Procedure for Applying Identifiers to Documents

Every document should be assigned an identifier by its creator at the time of document creation. The form for the document identifier which has been agreed is:

[institutional id] . [origination] / [destination] / [textual id] / [date] / [version]

With use it should become as familiar and as easy to construct as a standard bibliographic identifier.

This part identifies the institution which generated the document, e.g. gla for Glasgow University; shefc for Scottish Higher Education Funding Council; gda for Glasgow Development Agency; jisc for Joint Information Systems Committee (see authority code list under 1.2). Terminate with a period mark. The institutional identifier will be automatically attached to documents within the GU document system.

This part indicates the originator of the document which may be a body, such as a Committee, Planning Unit, Faculty, Department, Centre, etc. or an individual in their role in relation to the administrative unit or the University, such as the Secretary of Court, Principal, Clerk of Senate, Director of Service, Dean of Faculty, etc. The authority list of codes for University administrative units and officers and other institutional units will provide existing codes and the guidelines for the construction of codes will assist in the production of new ones. Terminate with a single slash.

This part identifies the destination or intended recipient of the document, drawn from the authority list of codes for University administrative units and officers and external institutional units. Terminate with a single slash.

The textual identifier should be a concise reflection of the document content i.e. an abbrevation of its "title" and should contain up to 10 characters. For agenda and minutes documents, this identifier should be "agenda/" and "minutes/" respectively. Terminate with a single slash.

Use the date of the meeting for the minutes, agenda or a report to a committee meeting. Use the date of creation of the document for any other document. The form of the date should be yyyy-mm-dd.

When creating a subsequent version of a document, the subsequent versions must have a version number, e.g. /2 or /3. The initial version of a document does not require a version number. Prefix with a single slash.

The agenda for a meeting of the Information Services Committee held on 1 May 1998 would be created with the identifier: isc/isc/agenda/1998-05-01

The minutes of the same meeting would have the identifier: isc/isc/minutes/1998-05-01

The second version of a service report from the Information Users Committee to this meeting could have the identifier: iuc/isc/servrep/1998-05-01/2

A document intended for general use, not created through a committee procedure, would be given the same code for origination as for destination and the textual identifier would be followed by its date of creation. The third version of a Computing Service document on desktop standards could have the identifier: gucs/gucs/desktopst/1998-05-08/3

A report on student residences from the Secretary of Court to SHEFC could have this identifier: sec/shefc/residencesrep/1998-05-01

• Use lower case throughout for the identifier.
• The identifier, in full, should be entered on the document in the form of a header in the top right hand corner of at least the first page.
• The list of codes will become the authority list of origination codes. An appropriate authority within the University will take responsibility for the maintenance of this list of origination codes. Document creators will agree to conform to the "authority list".
• The institutional identifier will be automatically attached to documents within the GU document system.
• Creation aids will be developed to assist the creation of identifiers.

When referring to a document from within the text of another document, use the document identifier which appears on the first page of the document to which you are referring, appending version number 1, if necessary.

When referring to a sub-unit of a document use a hash to indicate this part of the identifier. The absence of a component identifier indicates a reference to the entire document. For example a reference to item 999.2 in the library committee minutes would have the form: libc/libc/minutes/1998-02-01/1#999.2

A reference to paragraph 2.1 of the response from the Director of Computing Service to JISC circular JISC1/98 would have the form: gucs-d/jisc/respJISC98/1998-06-01/1#2.1

Most documents arriving from external sources will have their own reference code, in which case all that is required is to preface that with an institutional identifier for the source organisation. For example, a circular document referenced C1/98 from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council should be referenced: shefc."C1/98". The external reference must be surrounded by quotation marks.

RTF version of this document

ERM Documents index

Prepared by: Mrs L. Richmond L.Richmond@archives.gla.ac.uk

18 February 1999