Transcript Implementing EAD - Rice Scholarship Home
Implementing EAD
A quick-start class Amanda Focke, C.A.
Class Outline
What is EAD? What are its benefits?
Quick XML lesson 1-1:30pm 1:30-1:40 Mapping typical finding aid parts to EAD parts 1:40-2 Introducing tools 2:00-2:30 Break Hands-on entering data Review of resources, discuss how to get going at your place 2:30-2:45 2:45-4 4-5
What is ?
EAD stands for Encoded Archival Description, and is a non-proprietary, xml based,
de facto
standard for the encoding of finding aids for use in a networked (online) environment. While the finding aids may vary somewhat in style, their common purpose is to provide detailed description of the content and intellectual organization of collections of archival materials.
EAD facilitates the standardization of collection information in finding aids within and across repositories.
EAD is ONE platform
instead of finding aids being in all sorts of media such as Word, Access, Excel, typed on paper, pdf’s, even regular html web pages
Within that ONE platform, we all use the same set of “tags”
– even if their labels are different. For ex., your container list can be labeled “Container List” or “Detailed Description” but either way the tag for that is
More about tags and labels shortly…
What are the benefits of using EAD?
Being based on XML, it is
very repurpose-able.
From one xml file, you can easily make a print version with nice headers, or a web version with active links, or part of a database-driven search interface, and so on. It’s the
best model we have for structuring our finding aids
consistent
manner. in a
What are the benefits of using EAD?
It’s also therefore our best hope for
making it possible to search across finding aids and across repositories
–
which is very important to our users. Yes, Google can do that to a degree, but it’s very sloppy!
How do people present EAD?
Typical EAD presentation is as an html web page that looks like a nice paper printout.
http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/finding aids/manuscripts/0150/ Others use it like a database to make browsing and advanced searching possible across collections PolarBear Expedition Project http://polarbears.si.umich.edu/ ArchivesHub UK (national finding aid repository in the UK) http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/index.html
How do people present EAD? cont.
“Visualizing Archives” research “The development of visualization tools for assessing information contained in electronic archival finding aids created with Encoded Archival Description (EAD)”. Project known as “ArchivesZ: The Next Generation” http://www.spellboundblog.com/2008/09/12/neh -digital-humanities-startup-grant-news visualizing-archival-collections/
ArchivesZ prototype screenshots http://www.spellboundblog.com/2007/04/08/visualizing-archival-collections/
ArchivesZ prototype screenshots http://www.spellboundblog.com/2007/04/08/visualizing-archival-collections/
How else might EAD be used in the near future? On-line XML can be searched and delivered on many devices, not just laptops and desktop computers, but on cell phones and cell phone-like technology which use xml as the standard data format. How else?
Quick XML lesson: What’s xml? EAD XML
Other xml “languages”
XML (Extensible Markup Language)
is a system for organizing and describing the content of an electronic document. It uses
tags (elements)
and
attributes (additional info about the tag).
EAD is one implementation of XML
.
Any implementation of XML, uses a separate
“rules” file called a Document Type Definition (DTD)
which states how tags and attributes may be used, where and how each tag may be used, and which elements are allowed to occur within other elements (also called nesting).
Source: Indiana EAD manual pg.4
How is XML different from HTML?
EAD (XML) is designed to semantically identify units
useful for archivists and researchers using primary source materials in archival collections. of information
HTML is strictly for physical presentation on the web
present this as big font, or this as smaller font, or this as a table or a sentence.
– tags might say For example, where HTML might use:
Mexican War
indexing.
to indicate a paragraph or a single line of text – it’s only about how this text should LOOK on-line. This would not lend itself to any EAD would use a content-related tag
Mexican War repository by subject.
-- to say the Mexican War is a subject here. Then this info could be easily indexed for browsing a EAD almost exclusively uses
presentation-independent declarations.
Quick XML lesson: What does it look like?
Element (tag):
An element describes the data it contains. Elements are enclosed by angle brackets.
Each use of an element must include both an opening tag and a closing tag.
For example (elements are in bold): <
unittitle
>The Title of a Finding Aid Unit
unittitle
> <
unitdate
>5 March 1997
unitdate
> <
physdesc
>This collection includes 300 items.
physdesc
> <
processinfo
>Collection processed by John Doe.
processinfo
> <
persname
>John Quincy Adams
persname
>
Quick XML lesson: What does it look like? cont.
Attribute:
Attributes provide additional information about elements. An attribute name must be followed by an equals sign (=) and the value of the attribute must be enclosed in double quotation marks (“). For example (attributes are in bold): type ="Box">4 normal ="1997-03-05">March 5, 1997 source ="lcnaf" encodinganalog ="600" role ="subject“ normal ="Adams, John Quincy, 1767-1848">John Quincy Adams
How do I work with it?
1.) You make an ead.xml file and check that it is valid
(there are various tools for this – which we will discuss)
2.) You find a stylesheet you like (edit it if necessary to add your institution logo, or change the color scheme, etc. – see resources at end of presentation) 3.) Use an xml editor to apply the stylesheet to the ead file.
4.) Voila – you have a web-ready finding aid.
Quick XML lesson (Validating the xml file with the dtd)
+
=
ead.xml file ead.dtd (rules file) valid ead.xml file (
or, possibly….)
Your ead file needs to be checked against the rules file (dtd), so you’ll know if it’s a valid ead file or not.
an invalid ead.xml file
So let’s see it work!
A valid ead file
your-finding-aid.xml
plus a stylesheet to structure output
make-a-web-version.xsl
equals your desired output!
your-finding-aid.html
Mapping typical finding aid parts to EAD parts Creator / author
See Appendix A – a Word finding aid with headings and corresponding tags
A closer look before we get into more detail:
Main parts of an EAD file
Wrapper for description of the electronic finding aid (not of the collection itself)
Wrapper for the narrative description of the collection itself
Description of subordinate components (the container list) See Appendix B – XML doc with the color bars on the side
Break!
Hands-on: entering data to create ead There are a number of ways to create your ead:
Hand coding
in notepad
– yipes! Not for most people.
Microsoft Word
finding aid template with macros which turn it into xml
– works, apparently
XML editor
such as Oxygen
– easy enough if you don’t mind working directly in code/tags
Web form
such as the one at UK NationalArchives’ ArchivesHub website
– cool for narrative front matter but clunky for the container list part
Export it from your collection mgmt software
STAR or Archivists Toolkit such as Cuadra We will test out using the ArchivesHub web template for a jumpstart on the narrative part of the finding aid, then cut and paste that into Oxygen and make the container list.
Go to the ArchivesHub template
http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/template/ne w/eadform2.html
We’ll use this to cut and paste our front matter / narrative portion of the finding aid.
In the ArchivesHub webform:
1.) Check the box for “ container list later.
Include subordinate components
within this record (this record will include
3.) Press the render to EAD button. 4.) Save as DunbanEADfromHub.xml into the folder on your desktop.
Ta daaah!
Instant EAD!
Now what? Open Oxygen, open a that xml document Is it valid? No! Why not? The ArchivesHub exports valid EAD but it’s apparently the older version called EAD 1.0, you need to make it the more current version called EAD2002 and the following steps do that. (the price we pay for convenience…)
Correcting ArchivesHub output from EAD 1.0 to EAD2002
Replace the top 2 lines
with the following, which you copy from your 00253.xml file:
In the
Delete langmaterial ="eng“
attribute from the
Delete the admininfo tags
inside them.
– but not the tags contained
Delete the
tag. It should validate now… . attribute in the
We’re getting somewhere!
Now let’s transform it into html just to see what it looks like at this point, without the container list added.
Click the transformation (red triangle) icon and select EAD, and then click the “transform now”. Name the file something like Dunban.html, save it to your desktop folder, and open it by double clicking it.
Now we need the container list
You could do this in the ArchivesHub webform, but it still would have to be cut and pasted here.
Also, it’s good to learn a little about working in code in case you have to troubleshoot anything later.
Container list tags / nesting
Proper nesting is important
Follow the example . . .
Go to your file “00253.xml” and paste the
What if you don’t know where to put a tag or what tag to use? Use the EAD tag library Home: http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/ Index by element name http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/appendix_d.html
Crosswalks from other formats http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/appendix_a.html
Transform your complete finding aid
Finished encoding? Your file is valid? Transform it into web-ready html: Press the transform (red triangle) icon on the toolbar Select EAD as your output Press “Transform now” Name the output file something Voila !!
Victory!!
Hooray! You did it! Or, was there a problem? Typical problems – stylesheet not filed where the program thinks it should be, or…
Where are some other stylesheets to try? EAD Cookbook http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/e ad2002cookbookhelp.html
Rice uses Cookbook stylesheets (slightly altered for color scheme) WRCeadcbs5.xsl for the frontmatter paired with dsc7.xsl for the container list North Carolina’s NC ECHO project http://www.ncecho.org/ncead/tools/tools_h ome.htm
If you didn’t like the ArchivesHub webform and the subsequent tweaking… You could use ead templates from the EAD cookbook in an XML editor such as Oxygen eadcorporate2002xm.xml
eadperson2002xm.xml
That would be fill-in-the-blanks also, but within the code. (That’s how we created finding aids here at Rice before we started using Archivists’ Toolkit.)
Official EAD / finding aids info
EAD official website (EAD files, stylesheets, guidelines, tag library) http://www.loc.gov/ead/index.html
SAA’s EAD helper pages http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/ Also to participate in a broader EAD discussion, subscribe to the EAD Listserv . You can also search the list's archives for any past topics that may be applicable to your questions. DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) is helpful as a content standard – how to create a title, etc.
EAD creation helper tools available on-line
Microsoft Word template & macros developed by Bentley Historical Library at Univ. of Michigan:
http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/bhlfiles.php
(set this up in your instance of Word, read their manual, and in theory your Word doc is rendered into EAD code at the press of a macro button) ArchivesHub on-line web form (fill in the blanks on-
line, then cut & paste your resulting EAD code into an editor)
http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/eadform2002.html
North Carolina EAD Project Tools
http://www.ncecho.org/ncead/tools/tools_home.htm
(templates using the xml editor Notetab)
More EAD documentation on-line
SAA’s list of EAD implementors http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/i mplementors.html
Indiana’s manual and general info http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/services/metad ata/activities/eadDocumentation.shtml
A project to watch: X-EAD
The University of Utah has been developing a form based tool for creating and modifying EAD documents, which they are calling X-EAD. It is a desktop application written in Java, which is designed to read, create, and update EAD documents. The output is compliant with the minimal requirements of the Utah Manuscripts Association EAD Best Practice Guidelines, which are an adaptation of the Northwest Digital Archives specifications using the EAD 2002 Schema. Right now they just have a placeholder on their Web site (at http://www.lib..utah.edu/digital/tools.php#xead )
Where your EAD / finding aids can be listed TARO (Texas Archival Resources Online) – freely available on-line, free to submit info to http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/admin/howdoi/participate.h
tml OCLC's ArchiveGrid - - available to users only via subscribing libraries, free to submit info to. l http://archivegrid.org/web/index.jsp
Archives USA - available to users only via subscribing libraries, free to submit info to.
l http://archives.chadwyck.com/home.do
and your repository can be listed on this webpage (free): University of Idaho’s list “Repositories of Primary Sources” l http://www.uidaho.edu/special collections/Other.Repositories.html
TARO participation
Joining TARO is free but requires approval and a little set-up icipate.html
– see instructions at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/admin/howdoi/part Send in your xml files, tagged according to TARO’s guidelines: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/admin/howdoi/200 2tagguidelines.html
TARO takes your xml and posts it as an html web page.
Vendors who create EAD from your finding aids Apex CoVantage http://www.apexcovantage.com/ ArchProteus http://members.shaw.ca/ArchProteus/index.htm ByteManagers Techbooks http://www.bytemanagers.com/ (Aptara) http://www.techbooks.com/
Note: You still need some understanding of EAD in order to tell vendors how you want certain things handled and to be able to troubleshoot your completed files. You can use the TARO guidelines as general “instructions” for the vendor.
One last thing – EAD schema
The EAD schema will eventually replace the dtd, because in general XML files “in the future” will be validated by schema rather than by dtd.
There is a nice stylesheet on the official EAD website to transform your dtd-compliant EAD into schema-compliant EAD.
Why not start using the EAD schema now? There are virtually no stylesheets out there for it TARO doesn’t accept schema-compliant files yet.
Thanks!
Call or e-mail with questions as you get going in your repository. Amanda Focke [email protected]
713-348-2124