Intro to Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

6/18XML + 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 classAssignment 4: Encode finding aids in EAD

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

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

Review of what we’ve covered so far

XML DOCUMENT

Schemas (.dtd or .xsd)

determine the structure

of XML

XSLT outputs XML in multiple ways

HTML for display

XML PDF

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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?

Take a break

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)

Your turn!

• Assignment 4: Encoding finding aids in EAD