Fergus Fahey - DRI/ARA(I) Training: Introduction to EAD - EAD Workshop

EAD WORKSHOPDRI 9 March– Fergus Fahey

Format of Workshop• Origins of EAD• EAD in practice• Practical example• Practical work

Simple EAD Markup• <c level="item">

• <did>

• <unittitle>Handwritten letter in form of a diary by Lúghaidh Lamh Fada [Michael Cusack] entitled &quot;Diary of Lúghaidh Lamh Fada, Creevah, Co.Clare&quot; </unittitle>

•

<unitid>P95/1</unitid> <unitdate >20-30 June 1902</unitdate> <physdesc><extent >10 pp</extent></physdesc> </did> <scopecontent>

• <p>

• Handwritten letter in form of a diary by Lúghaidh Lamh Fada [Michael Cusack] entitled "Diary of Lúghaidh Lamh Fada, Creevah, Co.Clare". Giving humorous account of a holiday in County Clare, travelling there from Dublin via Limerick, visiting cousins and friends, travelling to Ennis, Ruan, Corofin, Lisdoonvarna, Creevah, Kilfenora. Mentioning Hugh Brady, cousins Patsey, Michael, Lizzie Cusack, and cousin John Culliney. Also mentioning a meeting of "Gaels" in Limerick during night of travel, and giving impressions from his address to a Mr Hourigan's Gaelic League meeting in Corofin: "Spoke loudly, strongly and melodiously with the illimitable resources and delightful imagery of a man of two tongues... my voice was as sweet as an Irish tune and its intonations as graceful as the curl of a reel". Also referring to the "Tuovahera tragedy in 1831" when Cusacks and neighbours killed "the five unfortunate men who were doing what the peelers did afterwards in Mitchelstown"

• </p> </scopecontent> </c>

Why EAD was created• To allow the re-use and sharing of archival finding aids

“The most appealing reason for standardizing the encoding of finding aids, however, is that standardization will support the long-cherished dream of providing…universal, union access to primary resources…. [Allow users to] locate archival materials at any time and from any place….Standardized description will also enable the "virtual" reintegration of collections related by provenance, but dispersed in different repositories.”Daniel V. PittiD-Lib Magazine, November 1999, Volume 5 Number 11

Why EAD was created• For example the relatively small amount of archival material

relating to James Joyce is distributed around a number of different archives. According to Pitti’s vision digitised versions of all these could be accessed from a single finding aid/interface.

• Technologically this is certainly possible – considered all the music recording which can be accessed from a single interface like itunes or Spotify.

• However this hasn’t happened for various reasons – Lack of investment, lack of will, lack of demand, lack of expertise, copyright considerations, lack of need.

5 Open Data – Tim Berners Lee★

5 Open Data – Tim Berners Lee★

★ Make your finding aid available on the Web (whatever format) under an open license.

★★ Make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of word doc)

★★★ Make your finding aid available in a non-proprietary open format (e.g., CSV as well as, Excel)

★★★★ Use URIs to denote items, so that people can point at your material

★★★★★ Link your data to other data to provide context, make available as LOD. Of nearly 10,000 data sets available on data.gov.uk only 4% could be 5 star

5 Open Data★• Hardcopy Descriptive List

• Ms Word/PDF

• Database• Calm• + Calm View• + Customisation

• ICA-Atom

• Xml Mark-up tool (EAD)

• Zero

• Zero - ★

• Zero – ★ ★ ★• Zero• ★• ★ ★ ★

• ★ ★ ★

• ★ - ★ ★ ★

XML finding aid. Machine readable. Not pretty but it’s also human readable.

XML transformed using XSLT

Problems with EAD• Very flexible – A good thing in many ways, bad because a

standard that can be used in lots of ways is in danger of not being a standard. In reality EAD records are used with in an institution to put finding aids on line or within formal groups which mandate greater standardisation for participation e.g. Online Archive of California (OAC) rather than widely shared according to the original ‘dream’ and vision.

• Creating an EAD record may be relatively easy and tools are available to help. Writing the XSLT and setting us the system to make the EAD records available is technically far more challenging.

Example EAD to HTML for Web• Export descriptive list from ICA-ATOM to EAD XML file.• Use xsl (style sheet) to convert data from the xml file to

html for display in web browser.• Make changes to xsl file to change the display• Make changes to the xml file to add or change data

Data Stylesheet Display

Transformation

P95.xml SimpleviewTemplate.xsl

Imagine the economies of scale Data Stylesheet Display

TransformationP95.xml

SimpleviewTemplate.xsl

P96.xml

P97.xml

P94.xml

P93.xml

toc.xsl –Table of Contents

col_level.xsl Collection Level

Fulllist.xsl Full List

Imagine the economies of scale Data Stylesheets Displays

Transformation

P95.xml

toc.xsl

P96.xml

P97.xml

P94.xml

P93.xml

col_level.xsl

fulllist.xsl

Structure of an EAD Document• XML document made up of elements and attributes• Tags are usually analogous to an ISAD(G) field e.g.• 3.2.4 Immediate source of acquisition = <acqinfo>• <ead> (root)

• <eadheader>• …… (about the finding aid document rather than archival material)

• </eadheader>• <arcdesc> (Archival Description wrapper element for the bulk of an EAD document instance)

• ….. Collection level description<dsc> (information about the hierarchical groupings of the materials being described)<c level=‘series’>…… (series level description) <did> (Most descriptive information tags)<unittitle>…</unittitle> </did> <scopecontent>…</scopecontent>

<c level=‘item’>……… (item level description) </c> </c></dsc>

</arcdesc></ead>

Important but not covered in exerciseControl access tags• Control access and authority control

• “A wrapper element that designates key access points for the described materials and enables authority-controlled searching across finding aids on a computer network.”

• Includes: corpname, famname, genreform, geogname, persname, subject.

• Much more important in a shared electronic finding aid that a hard copy one.

Common responses to xml/IT in humanities

• “All you need to do is read the manual”• True in a sense, but can you drive safely just because

you have read and understood the rules of the road.

• “Just get a computer scientist to do it”• You may not have access to outside expertise.• You need to be able to understand technology a bit in

order to draw up requirements for implementation.

Remember• xml must be well formatted• xml must be validated• xml can be displayed in a web browser using xslt

Useful links Contact• EAD Tag Library http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/index.html• ICA-Atom https://www.ica-atom.org/• Archives Hub EAD editor http://archiveshub.ac.uk/eadeditor/• Archives Portal Europe EAD

http://www.apex-project.eu/index.php/en/outcomes/standards/apeead

• EADiva - http://eadiva.com/• NUI Galway EAD Finding aids

http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie• Contact: fergusfaheywt@gmail.com