Creating an EAD Finding Aid. Nicole Wilkins. SJSU School of Library and Information Science. Libr 281. Professor Mary Bolin.

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1 1 Creating an EAD Finding Aid SJSU School of Library and Information Science Libr 281 Professor Mary Bolin November 30, 2009

2 2 Summary Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is a widely used metadata standard that was developed for archives to create machine-readable finding aids. The EAD standard has become a way for individual archives to store and present information for their patrons and it has created a standard structure for finding aids across the Unites States. American archivists have developed best practices and descriptive standards that allow them to share their metadata in union catalogs and in large multiorganization initiatives like the Online Archive of California. For this project, I have created an EAD based finding aid for a collection of photographic prints and negatives using the guidelines and tools developed by the Society of American Archivists. This paper describes the documentation, tutorials and templates, and software that I used to develop the finding aid. Introduction Creating metadata for archival collections has historically been an institution-specific endeavor. Descriptive standards for content and data structure were loosely followed by archives around the United States. Each archive developed their own internal standards for format and level of detail captured in their inventories and patron-facing descriptive documents. The introduction of the world wide web in the late 1980s and early 1990s prompted archivists to begin developing machine-readable finding aids that could be shared in union

3 3 catalogs or be made available on the web. The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) metadata standard was developed to help archives create metadata that could be easily translated into different formats from documents printed on paper, to MARC21 records used in library catalogs, to dynamically generated webpages. Since its introduction in 1998, EAD has become a professional standard for archival metadata creation. Knowledge and use of the EAD standard has become an essential part of archival practice in the United States. As a library and information science student focusing on archival studies, it is important for me to become familiar with the process of creating useful finding aids. This metadata project focuses on the creation an EAD finding aid for a collection of a few hundred photographic prints and negatives. I created this a collection of photographs over the last eight years while living in California, France, and The Netherlands. This project required me to organize the collection into useful series and sub-series, choose the type of information I would collect, work with common authority dictionaries, and use the information resources and tools provided by archival professionals for the creation of EAD finding aids. EAD EAD is a data structure standard has been implemented XML. It defines the type of data that can be captured and provides a structure for the data, but does not define the actual content of any of the fields. The structure itself is highly adaptable. EAD's DTD

4 4 describes146 elements that can be used to capture information about the finding aid itself (the author, any changes made since it was first created, who was responsible for the encoding, etc.), the collection as a whole, and any series, sub-series or individual items in the collection. It has a hierarchical structure, with elements lower in the structure inheriting information from those preceding it. This structure allows archivists to create groups of series and sub-series, with each smaller group naturally associated with the information of the larger group that it belongs to. Series inherit the information from the collection, and their series sub-series inherits the information from the large series as well as the collection as a whole. Finding aids only require a few data elements to be considered complete while at the same time providing a range of options that allow for very detailed descriptions of a collection. This flexibility allows archival repositories to choose the level of detail they wish to record from merely the name of the collection and its location in the stacks to a full description of each item - while still being a standardized, easily searchable, and adaptable finding aid. The EAD standard is maintained by the Network Development and MARC standards Office of the Library of Congress and the Society of American Archivists. It was designed with the following goals in mind (EAD Workgroup, 2002): 1. A goal of EAD is to make archival resources from many institutions accessible to users. To achieve this goal, EAD must accommodate a wide range of internationally divergent descriptive practices. The standard must be responsive to clearly articulated needs across the range of institutional or media-specific archival contexts. 2. EAD element and attribute names must be as universal as possible in both language and application to accommodate international interchange. At the same time, it is important to provide mechanisms to meet specific language or media output needs.

5 5 3. EAD addresses information about archival resources that is shared publicly. It is not a system for collections management activities such as the transfer of ownership, conservation, exhibition, use, storage or technical processing of materials. 4. EAD is a data structure and not a data content standard. It does not prescribe how one formulates the data that appears in any given data element - that is the role of external national or international data content standards. The EAD Tag Library illustrates the type of data that is intended to be included in an element to the extent necessary to correlate that element to a descriptive area in a particular content standard. At the same time, care must be taken to ensure compatibility with such external standards. 5. EAD is also a data communication format based on SGML/XML syntax. In some environments, archival description will be created and maintained using technologies such as relational or object-oriented databases, and EAD will be used principally as a transfer mechanism. In other situations, archives will manage descriptive data directly in SGML/XML-based systems. EAD must accommodate both environments. 6. EAD focuses on the structural content of archival description, not on its presentation. However, the standard must provide sufficient mechanisms to support output in a variety of formats. These may include traditional forms of finding aids such as registers, inventories, and lists of various sorts, as well as new output forms for both web display and print. 7. The EAD DTD specifies an order and grouping of elements to a limited degree. These are the internal structures of the DTD. For most output mechanisms using current technology, the order of elements within an EAD instance is irrelevant to the output of that data. Changes, as opposed to additions, to the structure will not be made simply to facilitate some output sequence or product. 8. Continuity of structure and content is an important factor in ensuring the acceptance and continued application of EAD. While the technological environment for EAD is complex and challenging to many institutions, the goals of EAD will be best served if technical barriers to its use are minimized. Changes to the DTD need to be as technically transparent as possible. In general terms this means a preference for adding rather than replacing elements and for ensuring that new versions of EAD are backward-compatible. The implementation of EAD in a widely used, internationally recognized standard like XML has greatly contributed to the adoption of the standard by archives. XML authoring tools used by web developers are excellent, inexpensive software packages that can be used by archives experimenting with using EAD at their organizations. The flexibility of the standard, ease of use, and wider support outside of the archival community is a huge benefit to the standard and to archivists using it.

6 6 Information Resources Creating EAD finding aids successfully requires several layers of knowledge and training. The first step in training is getting a working understanding of XML and XSLT. After understanding the basics of the markup language EAD uses, the specifics of EAD itself can be dealt with. This section will give a list of XML and EAD resources that I used when creating my finding aid. XML Information Resources EAD'S XML implementation allows archives to have a wide range of choices when putting together a project. XML is an internationally recognized standard that is used by web developers all over the world. Because of this, there are a wide range of excellent XML information resources and software tools for archives to chose from. Training XML training documents are relatively easy to find for free online. The W3Schools ( is an excellent resource for web developer training. The Norwegian based company has created an excellent set of training documents that cover HTML, CSS, XML, and XSLT among other web development tools. XML Editors

7 7 Although XML documents can be created using any text editor, it is extremely useful to use specialized XML editing software when creating these files. XML editors will validate your documents, meaning that they will check your XML documents against their DTD to make sure that you've followed the DTD's rules. They will also check to make sure that you haven't made errors like forgetting to close a tag. Most XML editors will also open XSLT and HTML files, allowing you to work on a whole project in one place. I used the Oxygen XML editor ( The editor is available for Linux, Windows or OSX and has a 30-day free trail. The software is excellent and provided an easy to use interface. EAD Information Resources Over the last ten years, the archival community has created a variety of EAD documentation and tools. The Library of Congress and the Society of American Archivists have taken the lead in providing archivists with support. Library of Congress The Library of Congress is responsible for maintaining the EAD standard and providing technical documentation for the community. The EAD schema and DTD are made available through their website - Along with the schema itself, they've created the Encoded Archival Description Tag Library. The tag library completely documents EAD elements. It describes each tag and its attributes, gives a description of what the tag is used for and where it is used

8 8 within an EAD document, and gives code examples. The examples used for each tag are part of a set larger EAD documents that are included in the library, giving EAD users concrete examples of how each tag fits into a larger whole. Crosswalks between MARC21 and EAD are also part of the tag library. In addition to technical information about EAD, the site includes a short history of the development of the standard as well as information about the design goals and philosophy of the team involved with creating the standard. Because of this combination of technical detail and development documentation, the Library of Congress's site is an excellent jumping off point for anyone interested creating their own EAD finding aids. Society of American Archivists The Library of Congress and the Society of America Archivists have worked closely together to create the EAD standard. While the LoC has taken on the responsibility for distributing the official technical documents for EAD, the SAA has become a sort of metadata repository for archivists working with EAD. The SAA's EAD roundtable group has created a website ( that has a wealth of information about EAD including a list of organizations who have used EAD to create finding aids, a section on articles and books that discuss different aspects of EAD implementation, training documents, and links to outside organizations that have developed EAD tools. The Tools and Helper Files section of the SAA website was especially helpful for this project. The

9 9 SAA's list of resources in this section gives archivists an idea of software packages that can be used to create their own XML files. It also had example XSLT files that provide a starting point for doing common tasks like transforming your EAD files from raw XML data into readable HTML pages, PDFs, or text files that can be used to create MARC21 records. This section also has a documentation package tilted The EAD Cookbook. Authored by Michael J. Fox in 2003, the Cookbook offers a step-by-step guide to creating an EAD finding aid. It breaks down EAD finding aids into different sections and gives suggestions as to what elements to use in each. The Cookbook comes with several XSLT files that will transform the EAD documents created according to the Cookbook's suggestions into HTML pages. The XSLT files are clearly written and commented so that it is easy to tinker with them to customize your own pages according to your needs. The Project The Collection I chose to use my own photographs as an archival collection to describe in a finding aid. This collection includes several hundred photographs taken between 2001 and The photographs include snapshots and portraits of friends and family; street photographs; architectural photographs; and travel photographs. The bulk of the photographs were taken in California (Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco) and western Europe. The collection includes both black and white and color photographs taken with a variety of cameras including a Polaroid Spectra instant camera

10 10 and several 35mm and 120mm film cameras. Goals My goals for this project were to: 1. Create a useful inventory of the collection that accurately reflects the organization and content of the collection. 2. Create a structure for the finding aid that would be easily expanded as the collection grows. The finding aid's descriptive text should allow for additions to each series and the organization of the series themselves should be structured in a way that would easily adapt to further additions without becoming unwieldy. 3. Create a finding aid that will be a useful example of a typical EAD implementation. I plan on using this document as part of a small tutorial. This means that I needed create a finding aid that had examples of the most common EAD elements and used a few different levels of description. Considerations Audience Defining the needs of the potential audience should be one of the first steps in any metadata project. The specific expectation and information needs of the final users of the metadata can guide choices as wide ranging as the tools you use, the organization of data, and the specific pieces of data that need to be captured. This finding aid had two intended audiences: myself and members of the library and archival community. These two audiences guided my choices in both organization and description of

11 11 my collection. The first audience is myself. This is analogous to the way that archives use finding aids internally as a way to keep an inventory of their collections. I wanted to create a finding aid that would allow me to glance at the document and have a good idea of where and how my items are organized and what is in each group of photographs. I also wanted to create a structure that would allow me to add new series and sub-series in the future. The second audience is the librarian and archivist communities. I will be using this finding aid as an example of my work in the future. This second, more public audience affected the information I chose to include in the document and how I chose to write the text. For instance, in an internal inventory of my collection, I would not need to include a biography or any copyright information, both of which I included in the finding aid. I chose to leave out lists of people featured in the photographs because that information wouldn't be useful to the general public unless someone featured became well known. I also chose to use the third person in the descriptions because it seemed useful to have more typical finding aid text when creating examples. Presentation Another consideration in creating this finding aid was how the text would be presented. Metadata creators need to find a balance between complete description and overwhelming amounts of information.

12 12 One issue that I dealt with in creating this finding aid was how detailed I should be about the geographic place names that I listed for each series. I started the project using city, state, region, and country names as part of my lists of geographic place names. A very detailed list would have been useful for me because I traveled extensively in 2006 and 2007, visiting small towns and villages in France, Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands. However, after looking at how the list of place names displayed in a web browser, I discovered that the detailed list that I'd created was difficult to read. The list, although complete, actually made it harder to get an idea of what was in the collection. I chose to remove city names and most region names outside of the US unless I had lived there. The list that I ended up with is somewhat less complete but it does a better job of communicating the most important information. Interoperability My last consideration for the structure and content of the finding aid was interoperability. Although I did not plan to create a MARC21 crosswalk for this project, I wanted to make sure that the way information was captured in the EAD structure would allow me to pull information that would be useful in MARC21 records in the future. I used the crosswalk table that is provided with the EAD tag library as a guide to creating MARC21 adaptable records. I added an attribute with that noted the MARC21 field numbers that I thought would match closely with the element's content. Creating an XSLT file that would pull those specific elements should be a relatively easy task in the future. Process Organization

13 13 The first step in the project was the survey and organization of the materials I was describing. The items in the collection were already organized in rough chronological order. However, I still needed to go through and make notes about subjects and places that were represented. After creating a list of subjects and place names to use as part of the description, I worked on organizing items into series and sub-series. I could have organized the items by format (35mm, 120mm, and polaroids all in different series), by geographic location (for example, putting all the photographs of Italy together regardless of the year they were taken), or chronologically. In the end I chose to organize the collection using aspects of each method. I split the Polaroids and the more traditional photographs into separate series because I store them separately. The traditional negatives and prints were then organized into chronological order. I created three sub-series based on where I was living when I took the photographs. These sub-series had the added benefit of providing a very rough geographic organization because most of my photographs taken in the United States are from time periods when I lived in there. Likewise, most of my European traveling took place in the two years that I lived there. Description Once surveying and organizing the collection was finished, I started creating the finding aid. Cookbook After looking over EDA's tag library, I was at a bit of a loss as to how to begin creating my finding aid. The tag library had example finding aids and detailed descriptions of tags and attributes, but it lacked

14 14 information about best practices or any sort of step-by-step guide to using EAD. The SAA's metadata repository was much more helpful in this regard. The EAD Cookbook provided a basic structure for my EAD finding aid and the XSLT files that are part of the Cookbook's package made creating a webpage and a plain, printable document very easy. Authorities Although I chose not to include subject headings in this finding aid, I decided that geographic place names would be useful. I have worked with the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names ( in past projects, and this resource was very useful for this project as well. TGN records list the preferred and commonly used place names for thousands of locations. I chose to use the English preferred names if the official name was different in English than in the native language. In addition to providing official place names, each record has a unique numeric identification number. I used that number as part of each place name's attribute so that it could be referenced later. Creating the Finding Aid Once I'd organized my collection and chose the data that needed to be represent the finding aid, most of the rest of the work involved figuring out how to mark up data in EAD and adapting XSLT files to display my data correctly. By closely following the guidelines laid out by the EAD Cookbook, I was able to figure out how to go about creating a finding aid from scratch. Understanding what elements to use and where they fit within the EAD structure proved challenging at first, but after creating the first few levels of data, the regularity of the structure became apparent and marking up data became much

15 15 easier. Conclusion EAD is relatively easy to use after some basic training. However, metadata projects using it require the creator to have a good understanding of XML, XSLT, and HTML. EAD is comprised of hundreds of tags and while the tag library is an excellent reference for each individual tag, it lacks a good guide to creating finding aids on your own. The EAD Cookbook helps to fill in that gap by providing a basic guide and helpful files that will convert the XML into HTML for you. However, I still found this guide to be a bit difficult to understand. It took some guess work and quite a bit of consulting different examples from the tag library, the cookbook, and archival repositories like the Online Archive of California to gain an understanding of how the tags work together. I would like to see a few more basic tutorials outlining the structure of EAD documents. Project Documents I've included the XML and XSLT files I created as separate documents. All of the files can be opened using a text editor. Opening the XML files in a web browser will display the same information in two different layouts. There are two.xml files. These are duplicative copies of my EAD finding aid. NWilkins_EAD_PrinterFriendly.xml is, as the name suggests, a printer friendly version of the finding aid. The information is displayed in a single column, with a white background and black text.

16 16 NWilkins_EAD_WithTOC.xml is another version of the finding aid. It displays the same information with an additional table of contents in a column on the left side.

17 17 Resources and Documents Used Encoded Archival Description Working Group of the Society of American Archivists and the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress. (Referred to as EAD Workgroup in text). (2002). Design Principles For Enhancements to EAD. Retrieved October 20, 2009 from Encoded Archival Description Working Group of the Society of American Archivists and the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress. (Referred to as EAD Workgroup in text). (2003). Encoded Archival Description Tag Library, Version Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists. Fox, M. J. (2003). The EAD Cookbook 2002 Edition. Retrieved November 30, 2009 from Online Archive of California. (2009). OAC Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description. Retrieved November 30, 2009 from Refsnes Data. (2009). XML Tutorial. Retrieved November 30, 2009 from University of California, Berkeley. Bancroft Library Finding Aids. Retrieved November 30, 2009 from