Hi Anna,
We've met briefly a few years ago - I'm Special Materials Librarian at
Victoria University of Wellington Library looking after collections of
archives and manuscripts as well as rare books, fine printing, and other
items which need to be used in a supervised reading room...

In answer to your questions:
1. " Once you have the finding aid available in EAD, how do researchers
go about requesting material? Is there a way to allow researchers to
login to the system and put in call slips for items they want to use in
the reading room? Or would you need a separate database to handle
requests and issues?"
Our reports give an Inventory ID reference, which clients in the reading
room use a paper form to request. We do have an online order form, but
not integrated into the reading room system as our online finding aids
at the National Register of Archives and Manuscripts
http://www.nram.org.nz/holder.php?id=77&parent=holderlist do not usually
give item references. We have location information separately in our
database, for security reasons.

2. " How time consuming is the work of creating the EAD finding aids as
compared to say creating the finding aid in a word processing package or
spreadsheet or database? Are there any packages available that allow the
process to happen more or less automatically or do staff have to key in
all the code?"
When I began here, there were a variety of paper lists and card indexes,
and no accession register. I did make an attempt to create individual
EAD finding aids for various collections, but found it too
time-consuming in a 1.5 person section, and moved to using the
Australian HDMS database system
(http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/HDMS/) as a management tool, because
it produces (among other things) an automated EAD report. The database
now includes provenance and accession information for all collections,
with series information for some, item information for some series, and
digitised images attached to some of these items. The database produces
html and xml reports, and these are available in the reading room. I
will be co-presenting a paper at the ARANZ conference in Wellington in
October about some development work on our xml report - hope to see you
there!
National Library of NZ has used the TAPUHI system used by Alexander
Turnbull Library, which is similar to your HAKENA system, to produce EAD
e.g. for the Ranfurly collection
http://ranfurly.natlib.govt.nz/content/about.htm ).

3. "What are the benefits for both researchers and the archives
institution in using EAD as opposed other methods of making finding aids
more available?"
The reason I chose HDMS as a tool was that it produced an EAD report. I
used to describe EAD as the 'emerging international standard' but
consider it has now well and truly 'emerged'! As well as the benefits
others have mentioned in terms of improvements longterm to access and
searchability and a 'do it once' approach, I think a major benefit is
the use of xml, which means that archival finding aids will ride the
wave of wider IT/web developments. 

All the best,

Nicola Frean
Special Materials Librarian
Victoria University of Wellington
Te Whare Wananga o te Upoko o te Ika a Maui
P.O. Box 3438  Wellington
NEW ZEALAND

Office:   Central Library, Room RB111
Phone:    64-4-463-5681
Fax:      64-4-463 6173
Website:  http://www.vuw.ac.nz/library/collections/jcbr/index.aspx 
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Anna Blackman [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Monday, 4 July 2005 1:01 p.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Introduction from new list lurker

Dear EAD listers,

I am the Curator of an archives and manuscripts collection based at the
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. We collect archives and
manuscripts from the both the University community and the wider
community
in our part of the country. The collection includes personal papers of
many
individuals, business records, school records, church records, sports
clubs, University records, local associations and societies and
everything
in between! We currently have about 8000 linear metres of material. We
use
an AWAIRS software based product for collection management and
arrangement
and description, our version of the product is called Hakena.

I joined the list a couple of weeks ago and have been reading the
postings
with interest since then. The reason I joined was so as to be able to
learn
more about the practicalities of EAD processing which is not used widely
in
this part of the world, yet. Obviously EAD has been or is being widely
adopted in North America and Europe as a method of getting finding aids
more widely available and searchable for researchers and seems to be
becoming a standard. I have some questions about EAD and I hope that
list
members may share their thoughts;

1. Once you have the finding aid available in EAD, how do researchers go
about requesting material? Is there a way to allow researchers to login
to
the system and put in call slips for items they want to use in the
reading
room? Or would you need a separate database to handle requests and
issues?

2. How time consuming is the work of creating the EAD finding aids as
compared to say creating the finding aid in a word processing package or
spreadsheet or database? Are there any packages available that allow the
process to happen more or less automatically or do staff have to key in
all
the code?

3. What are the benefits for both researchers and the archives
institution
in using EAD as opposed other methods of making finding aids more
available?

Thank you

Anna Blackman
Curator of Archives and Manuscripts
The Hocken Collections
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin
New Zealand
ph 64 -03-4798867
fax 64-03-4795078
email:[log in to unmask]
http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/libs/hocken/index.html