Working with the EAD

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(EAD 2002 DTD Overview)
Current revision (22:17, 1 July 2008) (edit) (undo)
(Specific Encoding Issues)
 
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* EAD2002 tag library http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/index.html
* EAD2002 tag library http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/index.html
* The Society of American Archivists EAD Help page: http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/
* The Society of American Archivists EAD Help page: http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/
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* Various EAD Best Practice Guidelines listed on the Society of American Archivists EAD essentials page: [http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/ http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/essentials.html] (the links to BPGs are at the bottom of the page)
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* Various EAD Best Practice Guidelines listed on the Society of American Archivists EAD essentials page: http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/essentials.html (the links to BPGs are at the bottom of the page)
* The EAD listserv http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/ead.html
* The EAD listserv http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/ead.html
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More information on the Bentley's encoding practices and workflow:
More information on the Bentley's encoding practices and workflow:
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* Overview of Bentley's workflow process for Finding Aids http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/eadproj.htm
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* Overview of Bentley's workflow process for Finding Aids http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/eadproject.php
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* Description of Bentley Finding Aids and their presentation on the web http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/findaids.htm
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* Description of Bentley Finding Aids and their presentation on the web http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/system.php
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* Bentley MS Word EAD templates and macros http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/bhlfiles.htm
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* Bentley MS Word EAD templates and macros http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/bhlfiles.php
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* Description of EAD tags used in Bentley EADs http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/bhltags.htm
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* Description of EAD tags used in Bentley EADs http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/bhltags.php
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* Fabricated region issues (some of these involve XSL as well)
* Fabricated region issues (some of these involve XSL as well)
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** If your &lt;unititle&gt; element precedes your &lt;origination&gt; element in <span class="unixcommand">the top level &lt;did&gt;, you will have to modify the maintitle fabricated region query in *.extra.srch </span> See [[#Title_of_Finding_Aid_does_not_show_up | Troubleshooting:Title of Finding Aid does not show up]]
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** If your &lt;unititle&gt; element precedes your &lt;origination&gt; element in <span class="unixcommand">the top level &lt;did&gt;, you will have to modify the maintitle fabricated region query in *.extra.srch </span> See [[Troubleshooting_Finding_Aids#Title_of_Finding_Aid_does_not_show_up| Troubleshooting:Title of Finding Aid does not show up]]
** If you do not use a &lt;frontmatter&gt; element, you will either have to either a) create and populate frontmatter elements in your EADs manually, or b) run your EADs through some preprocessing XSL to create and populate frontmatter elements, or c) you will have to create a fabricated region to provide an appropriate "Title Page" region based on the &lt;eadheader&gt; and you may also need to change the XSL and/or subclass FindaidClass to change the code that handles the Title Page region.
** If you do not use a &lt;frontmatter&gt; element, you will either have to either a) create and populate frontmatter elements in your EADs manually, or b) run your EADs through some preprocessing XSL to create and populate frontmatter elements, or c) you will have to create a fabricated region to provide an appropriate "Title Page" region based on the &lt;eadheader&gt; and you may also need to change the XSL and/or subclass FindaidClass to change the code that handles the Title Page region.

Current revision

Main Page > Mounting Collections: Class-specific Steps > Mounting a Finding Aids Collection > Working with the EAD


Contents

[edit] EAD 2002 DTD Overview

These instructions assume that you have already encoded your finding aids files in the XML-based EAD 2002 DTD. If you have finding aids encoded using the older EAD 1.0 standard or are using the SGML version of EAD2002, you will need to convert your files to the XML version of EAD2002. When converting from SGML to XML a number of character set issues may arise. See Data Conversion and Preparation: Unicode,XML, and Normalization

Resources for converting from EAD 1.0 to EAD2002 and/or from SGML EAD to XML EAD are available from:

Other good sources of information about EAD encoding practices and practical issues involved with EADs are:

[edit] Practical EAD Encoding Issues

The EAD standard was designed as a loose standard in order to accommodate the large variety in local practices for paper finding aids and make it easy for archives to convert from paper to electronic form. As a result, conformance with the EAD standard still allows a great deal of variety in encoding practices.

The DLXS software is primarily designed as a system for mounting University of Michigan collections. In the case of finding aids, the software has been designed to accommodate the encoding practices of the Bentley Historical Library. The more similar your data and setup is to the Bentley’s, the easier is will be to integrate your finding aids collection with DLXS. If your practices differ significantly from the Bentley’s, you will probably need to do some preprocessing of your files and/or make changes to DLXS.

More information on the Bentley's encoding practices and workflow:



[edit] Types of changes to accomodate differing encoding practices and/or interface changes

  • Custom preprocessing
  • Add dummy EAD to data
  • Modify prep scripts (Makefile, preparedocs.pl, validateeach.csh)
  • Modify *inp files (DOCTYPE declarations and entities)
  • Modify fabricated regions (*.extra.srch)
  • Modify CollMgr entries
  • Modify findaidclass.cfg (change table of contents sections)
  • Subclass FindaidClass.pm
  • Modify XSL
  • Modify XML templates
  • Modify CSS

[edit] Specific Encoding Issues

There are a number of encoding issues that may affect the data preparation, indexing, searching, and rendering of your finding aids. Some of them are:

  • Fabricated region issues (some of these involve XSL as well)
    • If your <unititle> element precedes your <origination> element in the top level <did>, you will have to modify the maintitle fabricated region query in *.extra.srch See Troubleshooting:Title of Finding Aid does not show up
    • If you do not use a <frontmatter> element, you will either have to either a) create and populate frontmatter elements in your EADs manually, or b) run your EADs through some preprocessing XSL to create and populate frontmatter elements, or c) you will have to create a fabricated region to provide an appropriate "Title Page" region based on the <eadheader> and you may also need to change the XSL and/or subclass FindaidClass to change the code that handles the Title Page region.
  • Table of Contents and Focus Region issues
    • If you do not use a <frontmatter> element you may have to make the changes mentioned above to get the title page to show in the table of contents and when the user clicks on the "Title Page" link in the table of contents
    • If your encoding practices for <biohist> differ from the Bentley's, you may need to make changes in findaidclass.cfg or create a subclass of FindaidClass and override FindaidClass:: GetBioghistTocHead, and/or change the appropriate XSL files.
    • If you want <relatedmaterial> and/or <separatedmaterial> to show up in the table of contents (TOC) on the left hand side of the Finding Aids, you may have to modify findaidclass.cfg and make other modifications to the code. This also applies if there are other sections of the finding aid not listed in the out-of-the-box findaidclass.cfg %gSectHeadsHash.
    • See also Customizing Findaid Class: Working with the table of contents
  • XSL issues
    • If you have encoded <unitdate>s as siblings of <unittitle>s, you may have to modify the appropriate XSL templates.
    • If you want the middleware to use the <head> element for labeling sections instead of the default hard-coded values in findaidclass.cfg, you may need to change fabricated regions and/or make changes to the XSL and/or possibly modify findaidclass.cfg or subclass FindaidClass.

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