ISAARCRF

ISAARCRF, or ISAAR(CRF), stands for International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families and for Corporate Records and Functions. It is an international archival metadata standard published by the International Council on Archives (ICA). The standard provides a model for creating authority records that describe entities and their activities.

The primary purpose of ISAARCRF is to support authority control across archives, libraries, and memory institutions. By defining consistent naming conventions, identity data, and linkage to related entities, ISAARCRF enables reliable disambiguation of entities and improves interoperability of catalogues, finding aids, and digital discovery systems.

ISAARCRF covers authority records for corporate bodies, persons, and families, and for the functions and records associated with corporate bodies. It specifies how to record preferred and variant names, life dates or active periods, places, scope and content, and types of relationships to other entities. It also directs documenting sources and references.

In practice, ISAARCRF data can be implemented in various metadata schemes, such as MARC authorities, Dublin Core, or EAD-encoded finding aids. It complements related standards like ISAAR(CPF) and ISAD(G), providing a coherent framework for linking authority data to description and access tools.

Since its promulgation by the ICA, ISAARCRF has been adopted by archives worldwide and may be updated to reflect evolving archival practices, including linked data and machine-readable formats. It remains a core component of modern archival description and discovery workflows.