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EAD  October 2001

EAD October 2001

Subject:

Re: EAD and "collection description"

From:

Rachel Perkins <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Encoded Archival Description List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 25 Oct 2001 15:01:55 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (176 lines)

Hi,

I thought I would respond to Pete's comments as I use EAD to produce
collection level descriptions (CLD) at The Natural History Museum (NHM). As
the Collection Level Description  Officer I am responsible for initially
creating CLD records across the three domains: museum (science
departments), library and archive. The project objective is to produce an
electronic resource discovery tool that will allow one point of access to
information about the broad range of collections housed at The NHM. We will
eventually expand to record "collections" in the Exhibitions and Education
Departments as well as the IT department.

For reasons I won't go into here, the decision was made to use EAD. It's
been a while now since I read the Application Guidelines in detail but I
can remember my initial concern that the standard was for "encoding finding
aids" rather than for "describing collections". However, my ignorance about
archival matters (I'm really a museum documentation person) meant that I
blithely ignored that comment and proceeded to catalogue a wide variety of
collections at The NHM. I have to say, I haven't found it too much of a
problem in applying the XML tags to the data we are capturing. In some ways
I was quite surprised at the ease with which I could do this.

The data I'm cataloguing comes from a variety of sources and exists in a
variety of  forms - specimens, books, manuscripts, databases, web pages,
organizational units, etc. The hierarchical series of records I am creating
begin by describing the organizational structure of the Museum, one record
per department which is linked to the curatorial units within each
department. To these records I am now linking more narrowly defined
collection records which, where possible will direct users to item specific
records. Very much a work in progress,  I have created  CLD records for the
organizational units and some specimen and library collections.

Yes there are some potential problems in the use of EAD. I can recall a
couple of instances where I had to find a feasible way to work around these
fairly minor inconveniences, taking care not to corrupt the EAD XML.  I
must confess that I'm not at all inclined to say that it is necessary "to
define clearly the scope/limitations of EAD in terms of the type of
collections it can describe". Rather I would argue that so far, so good,
EAD seems to be a valuable tool in the creation of CLD records for any type
of collection. And given that I haven't heard of any other XML DTD designed
specifically for collections type data plus having an aversion to
reinventing the wheel I think that EAD serves the purpose quite well.
However, that's not to say that I / we are unwilling to look at any other
viable options. By tagging the data in XML we are anticipating that future
data conversions will be problem free.

Rachel


At 01:01 PM 10/25/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I have some rather less than well-formed thoughts and questions about how
>broadly EAD might be used to describe "collections" which are (or so it
>seems to me at least) outside of its initial "target domain".....
>
>I should emphasise here that I'm concerned primarily with description at the
>level of the "collection" rather than at the item level. And while of course
>EAD has the capacity to represent hierachical finding aids which incorporate
>description at various levels all the way down to individual items, I think
>it's quite legitimate to use EAD for description at the level of the
>"collection" (using <archdesc>) without refining that with descriptions of
>the component parts.
>
>My first point is about the use of EAD to describe collections made up of
>digital items. It seems to me that in almost all the examples I can find,
>EAD has been used to describe collections of physical items. I have looked
>at the Online Archive of California and associated (sub-)projects, and
>although some of these finding aids incorporate (links to) digital
>representations/surrogates of the physical items, my understanding is that
>the primary description in the EAD-encoded document in these cases is a
>description of the "original" _physical_ items, rather than of those
>_digital_ surrogates.
>
>However, I pursued this a bit further.... In the App Guidelines, although
>the descriptions of the <dao> element at 3.5.1.2.9 and 3.5.1.7.4 emphasise
>this "surrogacy" aspect, the first paragraph of 7.3.6 notes
>
> > At present these likely will be digital facsimiles of original materials
>in another format (such as GIF
> > images of photographs, MPEG files of analog recordings, or TEI-encoded
>versions of paper-based
> > texts), but in the future more and more archival material will originate
>in digital formats.
>
>So I think this confirms that the designers had in mind that EAD _could_ be
>used to describe _digital_ items, whether those items are representations of
>physical items or they are the primary "manifestations" ("originals"). And
>by extension, if the EAD item-level descriptions can accomodate digital
>items, then at collection-level EAD can describe a digital collection -
>though the emphasis in the text here is still on _archival_ collections.
>
>My second point is about the "type" of collections/aggregations to which it
>is appropriate to apply EAD as a descriptive standard. I first encountered
>EAD when I was working in archives and (library) special collections and I
>guess those were the classes of collections I felt EAD "was for". However,
>in the background document at
>
>http://lcweb.loc.gov/ead/eadback.html
>
>the scope of the initial project is described as
>
> > to investigate the desirability and feasibility of developing a
>nonproprietary encoding standard
> > for machine-readable finding aids such as inventories, registers, indexes,
>and other documents created
> > by archives, libraries, museums, and manuscript repositories to support
>the use of their holdings.
>
>And I've certainly seen examples of EAD used to describe collections of
>museum holdings, though I admit I'm not sure whether it has been applied
>only to specific subsets of museum holdings?
>
>Increasingly, of course, the "holdings" of these institutions now include
>collections of digital items of various forms, or indeed "hybrid"
>collections which include both digital and physical items.
>
>My real point (hey, I'll get there eventually...) is that occasionally I
>hear EAD put forward as a candidate schema for the collection-level
>description of  "generic" collections - aggregates of almost any type, and
>made up of physical and/or digital items. As far as I know, EAD has _not_
>actually been deployed in this way.
>
>Although I consider myself to be an advocate of EAD(!), I admit I tend to
>feel uncomfortable at these proposals, on the grounds that it would seem to
>involve stretching EAD _way_ beyond the uses for which it was initially
>designed and defined.
>
>However, when others argue "EAD can describe collections made up of digital
>items" (which appears to be true - my first point above) and "EAD is not
>just for archival/special/manuscript collections" (which appears to be true
>from the real world usage - my second point above), then I start to struggle
>to articulate where the boundaries lie.... where it is appropriate to use
>EAD and where doing so would stretch the semantics of EAD too much and a
>different schema is required.
>
>On reading the background materials carefully, I think they side-step this
>issue slightly (probably quite unintentionally!) by emphasising the fact
>that it is a standard for "encoding finding aids" rather than a standard for
>"describing collections".
>
>Are there potential problems in the use of EAD to describe collections of
>types which hadn't really been considered during its design? Is it possible
>to define clearly the scope/limitations of EAD in terms of the type of
>collections it can describe? Is it useful/desirable to try to do so? Is the
>answer "EAD can/should be used for collections which typically have a
>certain class of finding aid"? Is it "EAD can/should be used to describe
>archive-like collections"?
>
>I don't have any good answers. Any thoughts on this would be much
>appreciated!
>
>Regards
>
>Pete
>-------
>Pete Johnston
>Collection Description Focus
>UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
>tel: +44 (0)1225 323619    fax: +44 (0)1225 826838
>mailto:[log in to unmask]
>http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/


************************************************************************************************************

Rachel Perkins
Collection Level Description Officer
Department of Library and Information Services
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, London, UK
SW7 5BD

020 7942 5646
[log in to unmask]

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