Presented by Karen W. Gwynn LS – Metadata University of Alabama Prof. Steven MacCall Spring 2011

Introduction Why the EAD Schema is Needed History of the EAD Current Controlling Party Left Side Elements Rules for Right Side Data Entry

The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is used for encoding finding aids in an online environment Finding aids are the primary means archives, museums, manuscript repositories, and libraries describe their archival and special collections EAD provides standardization of finding aids within and across collections

Formally defined by a DTD – Document Type Definition Designed to semantically identify units of information using primary source materials in archival collections Source:

Ability to: present extensive and interrelated descriptive information found in archival finding aids preserve the hierarchical relations existing between levels of description represent descriptive information inherited by one hierarchical level from another move within a hierarchical informational structure and to support element-specific indexing and retrieval (EAD Working Group, 2006)

1993 Berkeley Library/UC develop an encoding standard for finding aids used by libraries, archives, museums, and manuscript repositories different coding schemas Gopher presentation of an unmarked ASCII text; HTML marked-up ASCII tags; MARC tagging with new MARC Z39.2 record structure or SGML Selected Standard General Markup Language (SGML) looking at this today, conspicuously absent -- an XML solution. It did not exist in 1993!

SGML required a Document Type Definition (DTD) to set the order of markup tags for encoding documents of similar cases. Finding aids basically follow a similar structure, making SGML DTD a good match.

1995 Review of the Berkeley team’s SGML DTD by archival standards group Archival standards group agreed to: “collaborate in the production of 1) finding aid encoding standard design principles; 2) a revised finding aid data model; 3) a revised finding aid document type definition; 4) finding aid encoding guidelines and examples; and 5) an article describing the teams understanding of the structure and content of finding aids.” The term “Encoded Archival Description” – EAD – was first used.

1995 (con’t) Society of American Archivists “assumed some responsibility for involving interested archivists.” Eventually the SAA’s EAD Working Group “accepted responsibility for monitoring and supporting the ongoing development of the EAD DTD, tag library, and application guidelines.” The Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office was then asked to serve as the maintenance agency for the EAD DTD.

February 1996 Alpha release: Not perfect, but good enough April 1996 Beta release 1996 – 1998 Refinements continued in preparation for release of Version 1.0 However, emergence of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) slowed the release until the DTD could be revised to be completely compatible SGML/XML compatible version 2.0 released

The standard is maintained in The Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress in partnership with the Society of American Archivists. The Network Development and MARC Standards Office provides “library and information network standards and planning in the Library of Congress,” including, but not limited to, MARC, MODS, METS, Z39.50, EAD, and PREMIS.

Early element development used Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) as the basis for identifying the left side elements. Instead of building a large set of elements, elements are expanded through a group of Attributes. Currently 146 Elements Easily mapped to content standards DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) and ISAD(G) (General International Standard Archival Description) and structural standards MARC and Dublin Core (Wikipedia: Encoded Archival Description)Wikipedia

There are a minimum set of elements needed to structure a DTD Remaining elements are optional

Required elements are shown in bold. Element structure demonstrates the hierarchical nature of the EAD DTD

All standards are fully defined in the Encoded Archival Description Tag Library, Version 2002Encoded Archival Description Tag Library, Version 2002 Various Best Practices Guides are also available: Library of Congress: EAD Best Practices at the Library of CongressEAD Best Practices at the Library of Congress Research Library Group: RLG Best Practices Guidelines for Encoded Archival DescriptionRLG Best Practices Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description Online Archives of California OAC Best Practices Guidelines for EAB (maintained by the California Digital Libraries, e.g., CDL).OAC Best Practices Guidelines for EAB