EAD Basics, Part 2: MaRC's archival equivalent

The Function of EAD

There are lots of them. 146 separate Elements

http://www.loc.gov/ead/ is the official website.

As an XML DTD, EAD is structured via a series of nested tags, creating hierarchical metadata.

It serves to encode archival finding aids

Think the Archival equivalent of Union Catalogs.

Intended to create interoperable, universal encoding principles to allow similar cooperation as MaRC-encoded union catalogs do for libraries.

EAD vs MaRC

·         both are encoding standards to provide descriptive and structural metadata to collections of information or materials.

·         Both enable interoperability and unionization of searchable databases.

·         MaRC-encoded union catalogs tend to be organized based principally upon the item level of organization, as it is both the initial level with which the cataloger applying the standard interacts, and because it is the principle goal of most MaRC users.

·         EAD finding aids tend to approach materials from the opposite end of the scale. Archives tend to interact with materials from a many-to-few perspective, and many archival users interact with the archives starting at the collection level and narrowing it down only after that.

EAD Basics, Part 1

What is EAD?

·         XML-based DTD.

What does it do?

·         Provides structural metadata for electronic archival finding aids

Why Do I need it?

·         If you are tasked with using or creating a finding aid, it will most likely be encoded in or need to be encoded in EAD.

History?

Developed starting in 1993 at UC, Berkeley library

Intended to be non-proprietary standard for encoding machine-readable finding aids.

Wanted functionality MaRC did not provide.

Started it in Standardized Generic Markup Language.

During early development, the Library of Congress agreed to maintain the standard and its web presence.

4 release versions:

·         Feb 1996 Alpha

·         Dec. 1996 Beta

·         August 1998: Version 1.0

·         2002: EAD DTD 2002.

A set of resources I completely forgot to mention during my presentation, the XML Cover Pages provide a great deal of information about XML and its use. I will have to look through the site's content about the standard to better familiarize myself with it.

XML Cover Pages are located here: http://xml.coverpages.org/

EAD Resources Part 3: Great Examples of EAD repositories

These are repositories whose content is encoded in EAD. I will be adding to this list over the Summer on an ongoing basis, so please check back in from time to time.

National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections: http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/

OAC: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/

AOMS: Archive numériques d’Objets et de Matériaux iconographiques Scientifiques

EAD Resources Part 2: The Tag Library

After gathering information on the setup and basic structure of EAD from the Best-Practices Guides, I proceeded to look over the information on the Library of Congress' EAD webspace with more understanding.

EAD homepage: http://www.loc.gov/ead/index.html

EAD Tag Library: http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/index.html

EAD Resources part 1: Two Great Best Practices Guides.

As I mentioned during my presentation on it, EAD is a very important schema to know if you're going to have direct contact with archival repositories in the future. Given that, I would like to take the time to make a number of posts laying out more information about EAD than I was able to during the 10-minute presentation. This series of posts will likely end up continuing well into the Summer, as I intend to use them as an opportunity to learn more in-depth information about EAD myself.

Given that preface, I'd like to start the series off with the point where I really felt like I first started understanding EAD at all, the two best-practices guides for EAD Version 2002 published by the Online Archive of California and the Research Libraries Group.

OAC guide: http://www.cdlib.org/services/access_publishing/dsc/contribute/docs/oacbpgead_v2-0.pdf

RLG guide: http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/activities/ead/bpg.pdf?urlm=161431

More Indexing

Well, I've updated the images I asked about in my past posts, and am now moving on to discover my ineptitude for describing portraiture and architecture with the DePol Engravings.