Presented by Karen W. Gwynn

LS 590.902 – MetadataUniversity of AlabamaProf. Steven MacCall

Spring 2011

Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

IntroductionWhy the EAD Schema is Needed History of the EADCurrent Controlling PartyLeft Side ElementsRules for Right Side Data Entry

Encoded Archival Description

http://www.loc.gov/ead/

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

Introduction

Formally defined by a DTD – Document Type Definition

Designed to semantically identify units of information using primary source materials in archival collections

Source: http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/aboutEAD.html

Introduction (con’t)

http://pike.services.brown.edu/bamco/bamco.php?eadid=msdenison

Ability to:present extensive and interrelated descriptive

information found in archival finding aidspreserve the hierarchical relations existing

between levels of descriptionrepresent descriptive information inherited by one

hierarchical level from anothermove within a hierarchical informational structureand to support element-specific indexing and

retrieval(EAD Working Group, 2006)

Need for a Specialized Schema

1993Group @ Berkeley Library/UC

develop an encoding standard for finding aids used by libraries, archives, museums, and manuscript repositories

different coding schemasGopher 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)

History of the EAD

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.

History of the EAD (con’t)Why SGML?

1995Review 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.

History of the EAD (con’t)

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.

History of the EAD (con’t)

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.

2002SGML/XML compatible version 2.0 released

History of the EAD (con’t)

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.

Current Controlling Party

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.

Currently146 ElementsEasily 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)

Left Side Elements

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

Remaining elements are optional

Left Side Elements (con’t)

Left Side Elements (con’t)

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 2002

Various Best Practices Guides are also available:Library of Congress:

EAD Best Practices at the Library of Congress Research Library Group: RLG

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).

Rules for Right Side Data Entry