EAD in A2A

Bill Stockting, Senior Editor A2A and EAD Working Group: Central Archives of Historical Records, Warsaw, 26 April 2003

Introduction

We will look at: • Brief introduction to A2A • Application of EAD throughout the A2A process • Issues in using EAD and the way A2A has dealt with them • Demonstration of EAD in action

UK National Archives Network

A2A is one of the central stands of the National Archives Network:

The goal [is] that a researcher anywhere in the world who has access to the Internet should be able to contact a common gateway, submit a single enquiry and receive a single integrated response, listing the relevant source materials housed in all UK archive repositories. (Archives On-line: NCA, 1998)

National Archives Network

• National Archive Network strands: – National: National Archives (PROCAT and NRA); British Library (MOLCAT); National Archives of Scotland (NAS e-Cat) – Local: SCAN; Archive Network Wales; Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (e-CATNI); A2A – Higher Education: Archives Hub; AIM25; NAHSTE; GASHE • Funding: National Government and Lottery organisations (e.g. Heritage Lottery Fund HLF)

A2A Background

A2A Programme is made up of: • Steering Group: representatives of partners and archive community • A2A Central Team • Contributors and projects

A2A Background

What does the A2A Central Team do?

• Retroconversion of paper catalogues • New Cataloguing • Digitised images of archives themselves • A2A database for searching data on the Internet: http://www.a2a.pro.gov.uk/ • Return of data to contributors

A2A Background

• A2A started in April 2002; now in second phase to end March 2004 • Impressive figures for A2A database – Over 300 separate contributors – 500,000+ catalogue pages on the web – 50,000+ collections on the web – Over 4 million files and items described – 900,000+ searches made – Nearly 2 million catalogues viewed

A2A Data

A2A made up of 3 types of data and related standards: Catalogue data – ISAD(G) Authority controlled index data – ISAAR(CPF) and NCA rules; UNESCO Thesaurus Metadata – Dublin Core

EAD Background

Why EAD?

• EAD is the data structure format for archival finding aids • National Archives experience with EAD • Legacy data too inconsistent for a relational database • EAD is non- proprietary: it is open and free to use

EAD Background

Why EAD?

• EAD is standards based – Technically: SGML DTD; XML; e-GIF – Editorially: Accepts data in our standards • EAD data safe for the future

EAD and ISAD(G)

ISAD(G) states that to be a conformant archival description a finding aid must: • Be hierarchical: That is it must be made up of a number of levels, and must follow the four rules of multi-level description • Have certain data elements EAD is specifically designed to allow the representation of ISAD(G) finding aids

EAD and Hierarchy

ISAD(G) levels: • Fonds • Sub-fonds • Series • Sub-series • File • Item • • • • • • •

EAD levels: or or or or or

• • • • • • • • • •

ISAD(G) to EAD

•

ISAD(G) (v.2)

3.1.4 Level of description * 3.1.1 Reference code(s) * 3.1.2 Title* 3.1.3 Dates of creation * 3.1.5 Extent of the unit * 3.2.1 Name of creator *

EAD 2002

and level attribute • • • • • countrycode and repositorycode attributes , or or • 3.2.2 Administrative/Biographical history 3.2.3 Custodial history 3.2.4 Immediate source of acquisition 3.3.1 Scope and content 3.3.2 Appraisal, destruction and scheduling • • • •

* = elements ‘essential for data exchange’

ISAD(G) to EAD

• • • • • • • • • • 3.3.3 Accruals 3.3.4 System of arrangement 3.4.1 Access conditions 3.4.2 Copyright/Reproduction 3.4.3 Language of material 3.4.4 Physical characteristics 3.4.5 Finding aids 3.5.1 Location of originals 3.5.2 Existence of copies 3.5.3 Related units of description • • 3.5.4 Publication note 3.6.1 Note • • • • • • • • • • • • < langmaterial> and

Authority Controlled Indexing

*

*

*

*

*

* = tags used in A2A

Controlled access headings Names (general) Corporate body name Personal name Family name Place name Occupations Functions (administrative) Genre and Form Subject

Metadata – EAD Header

*

*

*

Finding aid metadata Identification Publication Creation Revision

* = EAD mandatory tags

A2A Process

The steps in the process are: • Data creation and standardisation • Quality assurance and editing • Searching • Presentation • Data Exchange

Data Creation

• EAD allows the electronic capture and standardisation of data originally in paper form • Paper catalogues ‘marked up’ to show structure and elements mark-up example • Metadata and indexing captured on a form – index page example • Keyers take this data and put it into the A2A EAD template - demonstration

Editorial and Storage

When the EAD files are returned we need to QA and edit. Options for editing are: • word processing and parsing • SGML/XML editor • database exports A2A uses the middle option

Searching

A2A database not a traditional relational database but and web enabled XML document manager: • SGML EAD file converted to XML EAD • XML EAD files imported into system • XML index files created customised to particular EAD elements • Online Searching provided for users: – Free text across descriptive elements – Specific searches across particular metadata, date and index elements

Presentation

EAD presentation a major issue: • Internet browsers do not display SGML • Internet browsers now displaying XML but not as we would wish • XML allows the use of XSL to give style and transform to HTML – EAD Cookbook allows ‘Do it Yourself’ demonstration of this: Cookbook Sylesheet • A2A uses XML to give a number of different views of the data

Data Exchange

• Final step is the return of data to contributors • Many have ISAD(G) compliant database systems • These automatically import EAD files • EAD can then be used as an export format in the future