Providing Online Access to the HKUST University Archives:

EAD to INNOPAC

Sintra Tsang and K.T. Lam The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

7th Annual Hong Kong InnovativeUsers Group Meeting 11-12 December 2006

Outline

Part I– HKUST University Archives– Access to University Archives

Part II– EAD Project– EAD2III

Part I. University Archives

HKUST University Archives– Mandate– The Formation Years– Retention Guidelines– Repository– Organization

Access to University Archives– Digital University Archives – Finding Aids– Bibliographic Records

HKUST University Archives – Mandate

To collect and preserve “legally important” and “historically valuable” materials including official papers, publications and agreements; internal planning documents; and major committee reports for the entire university community.

HKUST University Archives –The Formation Years

Mandate from the Founding President Established in 1996 50+ visits and record

surveys were conducted in the first year

Acquired 100+ linear feet of materials

HKUST University Archives – Retention Guidelines

HKUST University Archives – Retention Guidelines

HKUST University Archives – Repository

600+ linear feet (200 book shelves) of materials– Administration records, agreements, floor

plans, etc.– Artifacts: architectural model– University publications– 35,000 photos and slides

HKUST University Archives – Organization

60+ Record Groups and subgroups

HKUST University Archives – Organization

Access to University Archives

Digital University Archives – PDF file of Individual document

Finding Aid / Archival Inventory– A document describing the materials in a record

group or subgroup

Catalog Record– Bibliographic record of individual record group or

subgroup

Access to University Archives –Digital University Archives

http://archives.ust.hk/ Scope Database structure Highlights Impacts

Digital University Archives -- Scope

Crucial administrative documents, e.g.

– Senate meeting records– Committee / Task Force

records Publications

– Newsletters– Academic calendar– Congregation program– Press releases– Etc.

Digital University Archives -- Database Structure

Document title Record group / series / folder Originating office Event date Project investigator Keywords Access group and level

Digital University Archives -- Highlights

18,400 documents in 136 record series Access control on restricted documents

– Substantial customization to accommodate authentication

Provide staff, administrators and alumni convenient access to administrative documents and publications

– Full-text– Chinese and English search– Internet access

Digital University Archives -- Impacts

Positive feedbacks Centralized database for all offices &

departments Eliminate duplicate effort in building

individual database for administrative records Encourage cooperation Being recognized

HKUST University Archives – Organization

Access to University Archives –Finding Aid

A document describing a group of records originating from the same functional unit

Descriptive standard: Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Encoding standard: Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

Access to University Archives –Encoded Finding Aid

Access to University Archives –Catalog Record

AACR Ch. 4 Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts : A Cataloging Manual (APPM)

A mapping from DACS elements to EAD tags and MARC21 tags

Source: http://www.archivists.org/publications/DACS_TableC5_Erratum.pdf

A comparison of APPM, MARC, DACS and EAD

Descriptive standard Encoding standard

Catalog record

APPM -- 1.5B1

Textual materials: 16.21 linear feet

Electronic records: 6.3 megabytes

MARC -- tag 300

300 |3Textual materials: |a16.21 |flinear feet

300 |3Electronic records: |a6.3 |fmegabytes

Finding aid

DACS -- 2.5.8

16.21 linear feet of textual materials, 6.3 megabytes of electronic records

EAD -- <extent>

<extent>16.21 linear feet</extent> of <genreform>textual materials, </genreform>

<extent>6.3 megabytes</extent> of <genreform>electronic records</genreform>

e.g. Physical description area

Access to University Archives – Summary

600+ linear feet of archival materials from 60+ offices

Part II. EAD and EAD2III

EAD Project– Authoring Finding Aids in EAD XML schema– Publishing them to the Web

EAD2III– Web-based application to automatically loading

bibliographic data in EAD XML files to INNOPAC

EAD Project

Before 2005 - University Archives Findings Aids were created and maintained as static web pages– No standardization on metadata schema– No standardization on content description– Not interchangeable with other systems, such as

Library Catalog

EAD Project [2]

Mid 2003 - Systems and Archives staff began to evaluate the feasibility of using EAD’s XML-based schema to encode our finding aids

We evaluated:– EAD Cookbook 2002 for authoring and publishing

finding aids [http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/ead2002cookbookhelp.html]

– XMetaL and NoteTab Pro for creating and editing XML files

EAD Project [3]

January 2005 – Migrated the authoring and web publishing of University Archives Finding Aids to the EAD environment– Based on software library and tools provided by

the EAD Cookbook 2002, with local customization on its XSLT files

– Purchased NoteTab Pro software for use by Archives staff

EAD Cookbook 2002 Library as seen in NoteTab Pro software- Note the EAD XML file in the editing window

EAD Project [4]

EAD Cookbook 2002 with NoteTab Pro: Create or open an EAD XML file for editing Parse and validate the XML file Transform the XML file to HTML format Post the HTML version of the Finding Aids to

web server

Example of transformation: HTML version XML version

EAD Project [5]

The customized versions of the XSLT files are available for download from HKUST Library’s Resource Sharing Pool

http://library.ust.hk/software/ead.html

EAD2III

Bibliographic records are created on INNOPAC for each Record Groups in the University Archives

This cataloging effort is duplicating, because the bibliographic data is ready available in the EAD XML files created for the Finding Aids

In need of a program to automate the loading of EAD bibliographic data to INNOPAC

EAD2III [2]

EAD2III was developed in November 2006 to serve the need

It is a web-based application that allows Archives staff to automatically:– extract the bibliographic data from an EAD XML

file;– convert it into MARC (ISO 2709) format; and– load the MARC data stream to INNOPAC, via the

“OCLC to INNOPAC Interactive Interface”

EAD2III [3]

Interactive loading of record to INNOPAC is based on a technique we developed in 2003 for our Name Access Control Repository Project [http://library.ust.hk/info/nac/]

– There was need to interactively convert a NAC record to authority record in MARC format and automatically load it to INNOPAC

EAD2III is Java-based, with Tomcat as servlet container, and XSLT

EAD2III [4]

EAD2III Demonstration

Will turn EAD2III into open source software and make it available in the HKUST Library Resource Sharing Pool, if others are interested in– We will use EAD2III framework to create yet

another project for interactively loading bibliographic records obtained from external sources to INNOPAC. Stay tuned.

Thank You!