Multiple approaches to archival description Jinfang Niu University of South Florida SAA 2017, Portland, ORegon

EAD 3 Great for converting analog finding aids into online format Today, no longer in the conversion stage, need to adapt archival description to current technologies Changes in EAD 3 is not significant enough Creating new elements Deprecate existing elements Replace some elements Support for multilingual description, etc. The EAD Technical subcommittee acknowledges this The transition from mixed presentation and data to full data is not complete. One big reason is the resistance from the existing users of EAD: dramatic change causes information loss during migration.

Future of EAD Some countries do not use EAD. Even NARA does not use EAD. Without significant changes, sooner or later it will stop being used To stay relevant, it needs to be completely remodeled The conceptual model created by the ICA Expert Group on Archival Description could be a foundation. It identifies the core descriptive entities, properties of these entities, and relations among them. Utilize linked data technology

Other encoding methods METS and OAI-ORE Represent hierarchical structure Use external metadata vocabularies to describe the resources DC, FOAF, etc. Generic, can be used for any kinds of digital resources Widely used ArchivesSpace and Dspace exports structure and metadata of archival collections in METS format. Both Europeana and DPLA are based on OAI-ORE Facilitate integrated access to LAM resources

OAI-ORE is a linked data-based standard Linked data makes archival descriptions more granular An archival description becomes a RDF graph, and each node and edge within this graph is individually discoverable. In addition to supporting the discovery of records, linked data based on archival description potentially can support the search for information about any entities within archival descriptions and provide direct answers to queries. EAD based finding aids only support the search for the top unit of description

Separate and linked metadata records Many national archive use this approach, usually based on relational databases Each component has its own metadata record Metadata records for components are linked to form a hierarchy Each component is individually discoverable More granular than the traditional finding aid, and makes each component in a record aggregate individually discoverable.

Website style finding aids Provide more advanced features than what EAD can offer navigation structures, drop-down menus, advanced search functionalities, slideshows, animations, audio, and video, automatically turn pages for multipage documents, track download statistics, etc. Use general terms instead of technical archival terms so that they are easier to understand for novice users. Example finding aid for the John Peabody Harrington Collection maintained by the National Anthropological Archives (http://anthropology.si.edu/naa/harrington/). “About the Collection” in place of “Scope and Content” “About J. P. Harrington” in place of “Biography or history”. Similar to a general guide rather than a specialized finding aid, user friendly Not sure about its portability

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