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Intro to Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

Intro to Encoded Archival Description (EAD). 6/18 XML + XSLT for Libraries. Today. Review of assignment 3 Demo using bepress schema Review of what we’ve covered so far Background of EAD Advantages/limitations of EAD Anatomy of EAD Encoding finding aids in EAD In class

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Intro to Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

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  1. Intro to Encoded Archival Description (EAD) 6/18 XML + XSLT for Libraries

  2. Today • Review of assignment 3 • Demo using bepress schema • Review of what we’ve covered so far • Background of EAD • Advantages/limitations of EAD • Anatomy of EAD • Encoding finding aids in EAD • In class Assignment 4: Encode finding aids in EAD

  3. Review of assignment 3 • Posted bepress schema with my comments here: http://slis.uiowa.edu/~jlee/239/assignments/03assignment-schemawithcomments.xsd • Posted sample XML that follows schema here: http://slis.uiowa.edu/~jlee/239/assignments/03assignment-samplexml.xml

  4. Demo using bepress schema • Bepress is the company that hosts Iowa Research Online • Transformed metadata about electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) to bepress’ schema. • Uploaded ETDs files and metadata in one batch to Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd

  5. Review of what we’ve covered so far Schemas (.dtd or .xsd) determine the structure of XML XML DOCUMENT XSLT outputs XML in multiple ways HTML for display XML PDF

  6. Background of EAD • Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is a schema developed by archivists to describe finding aids • It began in 1993 as a project by UC Berkeley as a DTD in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) • Now EAD is available as a DTD or XML Schema

  7. What is a finding aid? • A finding aid describes the contents and scope of an archival collection • Researchers use finding aids as guides to collections they are interested in • Let’s look at one: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsc500/MsC461/MsC461.htm

  8. History of finding aids • Finding aids were originally written as paper documents • They have moved online as HTML • Now many institutions are migrating them to EAD • EAD is a widely accepted structural standard for storing and sharing metadata about archival collections

  9. Advantages of EAD • All information about a collection can be stored and managed in one place • Easy to share with other institutions to create union catalogs of finding aids • Helps archivists maintain standardize their descriptive practices • Offers more points of access for users • Can be connected to digital objects as archival content is digitized • When data is structured, it’s easy to migrate later

  10. Limitations of EAD • It’s hard to migrate old loosely or inconsistently structured HTML finding aids to EAD • Sometimes it’s hard for archivists to conform to the standard • There’s no really great software package out there to help archivists create new finding aids in EAD

  11. Anatomy of EAD • <eadheader> - where all the administrative metadata goes • Whose collection is this? • Who authored the finding aid? • Was it revised? *The header is for describing the finding aid document itself, rather than the collection.

  12. Anatomy of EAD • <archdesc> - where the basic descriptive metadata about the collection goes • Who is the collection about? • What is the title? • How big is it? • What are the predominant dates it covers? • How is it arranged? • Who donated it?

  13. Anatomy of EAD • <dsc> - where descriptive metadata about the contents of the collection goes • The contents can be described in five levels of detail • series • subseries • box • folder • Item • Has the content been digitized somewhere?

  14. Take a break

  15. Encoding finding aids in EAD • I will demo manually translating an HTML finding aid to EAD The Monday Afternoon Club (http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/findingaids/html/MondayAfternoonFtMadison.htm)

  16. Your turn! • Assignment 4: Encoding finding aids in EAD

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