Hurley's common practice rules for the documentation of archives & other records

HCPR began as a project mandated by the Australian Society of Archivists in the mid-1990s for the purpose of developing an Australian Common Practice Manual (ACPM).  The idea was to produce a local implementation (so far as possible) of ISAD(G), then in development, using a normalisation of descriptive rules from selected Australian archives programmes.  The Manual would then cross-walk these rules with those from ISAD(G).  At the time, the ICA Commission preparing ISAD(G), on which I was then the Australian representative, envisaged similar local adaptations in every country.  As we had expressed (and continued to express while I was there) disquiet about the direction which ISAD(G) had taken, it was felt to be important that an Australian manual should demonstrate how far we were compliant with international theory and practice as well as highlighting differences we felt to be beneficial but in no way heterodox – an application, in David Bearman’s terms, of a variant method to achieve the agreed outcome or recordkeeping requirement.Implicit in this purpose was a view that ours was the larger perspective, encompassing both the methodological aspirations of ISAD(G) and our own into a single descriptive framework capable of encompassing both as well as others - instead of adopting the narrow framework within which ISAD(G) was, in our view wrongly, being formulated[1] which we felt excluded acceptable variant methods (our own included).  It was this larger perspective that we had unsuccessfully urged the ICA Commission on Descriptive Standards to adopt.  As the number of ICA standards began to multiply and the Australian descriptive discourse became increasingly interested in metadata, this task became complicated and problematic.  In 1997, ASA withdrew from the project.  Under the Agreement subsisting between ASA and the author, rights in the project reverted to ASA and rights in the work (ACPM) reverted to the author. Under that Agreement, the author's publication rights over the work become absolute after ASA failed to take up its option to publish within a specified period from termination of the Agreement.