Providing Online Access to the HKUST University Archives: EAD to INNOPAC

1. Providing Online Access to the HKUST University Archives: EAD to INNOPAC Sintra Tsang and K.T. Lam The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 7th Annual Hong Kong Innovative Users Group Meeting 11-12 December 2006

2. Outline • Part I • HKUST University Archives • Access to University Archives • Part II • EAD Project • EAD2III

3. Part I. University Archives • HKUST University Archives • Mandate • The Formation Years • Retention Guidelines • Repository • Organization • Access to University Archives • Digital University Archives • Finding Aids • Bibliographic Records

4. HKUST University Archives – Mandate • To collect and preserve “legally important” and “historically valuable” materials including official papers, publications and agreements; internal planning documents; and major committee reports for the entire university community.

5. HKUST University Archives –The Formation Years • Mandate from the Founding President • Established in 1996 • 50+ visits and record surveys were conducted in the first year • Acquired 100+ linear feet of materials

6. HKUST University Archives – Retention Guidelines

7. HKUST University Archives – Retention Guidelines

8. HKUST University Archives – Repository • 600+ linear feet (200 book shelves) of materials • Administration records, agreements, floor plans, etc. • Artifacts: architectural model • University publications • 35,000 photos and slides

9. HKUST University Archives – Organization • 60+ Record Groups and subgroups

10. HKUST University Archives – Organization

11. Access to University Archives • Digital University Archives • PDF file of Individual document • Finding Aid / Archival Inventory • A document describing the materials in a record group or subgroup • Catalog Record • Bibliographic record of individual record group or subgroup

12. Access to University Archives –Digital University Archives • http://archives.ust.hk/ • Scope • Database structure • Highlights • Impacts

13. Digital University Archives -- Scope • Crucial administrative documents, e.g. • Senate meeting records • Committee / Task Force records • Publications • Newsletters • Academic calendar • Congregation program • Press releases • Etc.

14. Digital University Archives -- Database Structure • Document title • Record group / series / folder • Originating office • Event date • Project investigator • Keywords • Access group and level

15. Digital University Archives -- Highlights • 18,400 documents in 136 record series • Access control on restricted documents • Substantial customization to accommodate authentication • Provide staff, administrators and alumni convenient access to administrative documents and publications • Full-text • Chinese and English search • Internet access

16. Digital University Archives -- Impacts • Positive feedbacks • Centralized database for all offices & departments • Eliminate duplicate effort in building individual database for administrative records • Encourage cooperation • Being recognized

17. HKUST University Archives – Organization

18. Access to University Archives –Finding Aid • A document describing a group of records originating from the same functional unit • Descriptive standard: Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) • Encoding standard: Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

19. Access to University Archives –Encoded Finding Aid

20. Access to University Archives –Catalog Record • AACR Ch. 4 • Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts : A Cataloging Manual (APPM)

21. A mapping from DACS elements to EAD tags and MARC21 tags Source: http://www.archivists.org/publications/DACS_TableC5_Erratum.pdf

22. A comparison of APPM, MARC, DACS and EAD e.g. Physical description area

23. Access to University Archives – Summary 600+ linear feet of archival materials from 60+ offices

24. Part II. EAD and EAD2III • EAD Project • Authoring Finding Aids in EAD XML schema • Publishing them to the Web • EAD2III • Web-based application to automatically loading bibliographic data in EAD XML files to INNOPAC

25. EAD Project • Before 2005 - University Archives Findings Aids were created and maintained as static web pages • No standardization on metadata schema • No standardization on content description • Not interchangeable with other systems, such as Library Catalog

26. EAD Project [2] • Mid 2003 - Systems and Archives staff began to evaluate the feasibility of using EAD’s XML-based schema to encode our finding aids • We evaluated: • EAD Cookbook 2002 for authoring and publishing finding aids [http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/ead2002cookbookhelp.html] • XMetaL and NoteTab Pro for creating and editing XML files

27. EAD Project [3] • January 2005 – Migrated the authoring and web publishing of University Archives Finding Aids to the EAD environment • Based on software library and tools provided by the EAD Cookbook 2002, with local customization on its XSLT files • Purchased NoteTab Pro software for use by Archives staff

28. EAD Cookbook 2002 Library as seen in NoteTab Pro software- Note the EAD XML file in the editing window

29. EAD Project [4] EAD Cookbook 2002 with NoteTab Pro: • Create or open an EAD XML file for editing • Parse and validate the XML file • Transform the XML file to HTML format • Post the HTML version of the Finding Aids to web server Example of transformation: • HTML version • XML version

30. EAD Project [5] • The customized versions of the XSLT files are available for download from HKUST Library’s Resource Sharing Pool http://library.ust.hk/software/ead.html

31. EAD2III • Bibliographic records are created on INNOPAC for each Record Groups in the University Archives • This cataloging effort is duplicating, because the bibliographic data is ready available in the EAD XML files created for the Finding Aids • In need of a program to automate the loading of EAD bibliographic data to INNOPAC

32. EAD2III [2] • EAD2III was developed in November 2006 to serve the need • It is a web-based application that allows Archives staff to automatically: • extract the bibliographic data from an EAD XML file; • convert it into MARC (ISO 2709) format; and • load the MARC data stream to INNOPAC, via the “OCLC to INNOPAC Interactive Interface”

36. EAD2III [3] • Interactive loading of record to INNOPAC is based on a technique we developed in 2003 for our Name Access Control Repository Project [http://library.ust.hk/info/nac/] • There was need to interactively convert a NAC record to authority record in MARC format and automatically load it to INNOPAC • EAD2III is Java-based, with Tomcat as servlet container, and XSLT

37. EAD2III [4] • EAD2III Demonstration • Will turn EAD2III into open source software and make it available in the HKUST Library Resource Sharing Pool, if others are interested in • We will use EAD2III framework to create yet another project for interactively loading bibliographic records obtained from external sources to INNOPAC. Stay tuned.

38. Thank You!