The D.E.A.D. System
[Descriptive Elements for Archival Databases]
The D.E.A.D. System was initially designed for my Spring 2022 MLS capstone project at Queens College, CUNY. I sought a standardized method of recording burial marker metadata and found existing systems too complex and regionalized. It was my goal to create a new schema which would be accessible to broad audiences, extensible to current and future systems, and center the deceased and their communities as the subjects of the records.
Out of this project, and in conjunction with research I completed for my MA History capstone, I have been fortunate to present and publish on the subject of “Cemeteries as Community Archives” with the Society of American Archivists (SAA) at the 2022 annual conference and in the January/February 2023 issue of Archival Outlook. A significant section of this subject is dedicated to understanding burial markers as unconventional records and the process of preserving their explicit and implicit metadata in a standardized way. This elucidates the need for the D.E.A.D System.
While this project is still very much a work in progress, I wanted to make the initial materials available to anyone interested in collaborating or critiquing the idea. In the almost year that has passed since completing the initial version of this schema, I have conducted more research and concluded that it is still incomplete and requires editing. With that in mind, I am sharing the resource publicly in the hopes that others will find it useful and be willing to share their thoughts with me. As it stands, I do not recommend this schema to be used in any professional setting until it has been improved upon.
IMPORTANT!
This schema was designed with cemeteries as sites of community and respect for the deceased as subjects of the records as central tenets. Whether visiting burial grounds and capturing interesting memorials is a hobby or an act of research, please be mindful of others in the process (those whom you are in community with and those with whom you are not). As a method of record keeping, the D.E.A.D. System is colonial in its nature and should not be used to enact further violence upon marginalized people, their communities, and their ancestors. This includes burying grounds of Indigenous people, enslaved Africans, Black Americans, immigrant and religious groups, and other minoritized people, their cultures, and their communities. DO NOT USE this schema to record burial marker information unless you are working with, and have consent from, the deceased person’s living community—abide by their decision, regardless of your intent.
I am sharing this version of the project under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND, with the intention of releasing future versions under a more open license (see link below for more information).
The D.E.A.D. System
Physical Form
The physical form is to be used to record information about burial markers found in cemeteries and other burial sites.
Element Dictionary
Consult the dictionary to discover terms, their definitions, and examples.
Upload Form
An example of a digital upload platform, used to record information from the physical form on a server for digital preservation and broader access.
XML Display
A proposed structure for an XML tree for the metadata of each burial marker recorded within a cemetery or burial site, illustrating the nesting of elements.
A few things to note:
- After further review, I believe there are too many elements to this schema and that some need to be eliminated or combined—though I am unsure of which ones exactly.
- The “Burial Marker Identification” table in the Element Dictionary document needs updating upon consulting with community and academic users. Its current information reflects my sole attempt at condensing the wide variety of markers commonly found at burial sites.
- I created the Upload Form as an example of a possible program or web interface to be used to submit burial marker metadata to a digital database. A more user-friendly and intuitive design is required.
- The XML Display shows an example using basic XML structure rather than more advanced systems such as XML Schema; this is due to my own coding limitations. Collaboration with experienced programmers will also be a necessity.
The intended result of this project is for archivists to connect with (and support) their local communities through the medium of their surrounding cemeteries. It would be preferable to establish a pre-packaged, open source, program which archivists, cemeteries, researchers and other interested parties could use to record, preserve, and understand their local communities and histories. Ideally, the cemetery itself would retain the physical forms and digital database, though it is understood that this is not always a possibility. An alternative would be for a local, regional, or state historical society to take ownership of the information to act as a central repository.
There is much more to be said and debated about this idea, and I am welcome to all well-intentioned critiques! Please visit my Contact page if you would like to collaborate.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Records of the Dead 