We are planning to encode this information, partly because it gives greater
flexibility in displays, but also because of its usefulness to us when
digitising manuscript collections.
We make the manuscript hierarchy explicit in the persistent identifiers we
assign to digital copies of manuscript collection items. If the information
is encoded it is possible for a system to predict the persistent identifiers
and raise records for items and item parts as the digital copy is processed.
So far we've only digitised one collection: the Papers of Sir Edmund Barton
at http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/ms51/.
(To generate the series list on the home page from a finding aid in the way
it is done here you need level to be encoded separately.)
Judith Pearce
Director, Web Services
National Library of Australia
CANBERRA ACT 2601
Australia
Phone: +61 2 62621425
Fax: +61 2 6273 3648
Email: [log in to unmask]
NLA Web Site: http://www.nla.gov.au
> ----------
> From: Chris Prom[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To: Encoded Archival Description List
> Sent: Wednesday, 21 November 2001 2:18
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: numbering series/subseries titles
>
> I was going to suggest using the id and level attributes in the <c0x> tag.
> Looking at the tag library, <unitid> and the attrib's in <c0x> seem to be
> used for much the same purpose, but <unitid> is probably the better method
> here.
>
> So there is certainly a great deal of redundancy built into the standard,
> It may be problematic in the long run if everyone does this
> differently. This possibility seems to be emerging from the other
> replies.
>
> Like many institutions, we are not encoding this information. It would be
> interesting to know how many institutions are, since it would certainly
> aid retrival at some future point (when we share finding aids in a more
> systematic way) to know that everyone is doing it in a standardized
> fashion. So we are back to the issue of the trade-offs between
> flexibility and prescription in the standard.
>
>
> Chris Prom
> University of Illinois Archives
>
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Fox, Michael wrote:
>
> > Have you considered tagging the numerical designations as <unitid>s?
> >
> >
> > Michael J. Fox
> > Assistant Director for Library and Archives
> > Minnesota Historical Society
> > 345 Kellogg Blvd West
> > St. Paul, MN 55102-1906
> > 651-296-2150 (phone)
> > 651-296-9961 (fax)
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Stephanie Ashley [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 8:20 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: numbering series/subseries titles
> >
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > As we continue to work on implementing EAD (we are currently in the
> process
> > of assessing whether to adopt the encoding protocol of the EAD Cookbook)
> > we've come across a problem and I'm hoping that some of you kind and
> > knowledgeable people can give us some advice.
> >
> > In our repository we commonly assign numbers to our series and
> subseries. We
> > find that this enables us to reflect the hierarchical arrangement of the
> > materials we are describing and to express the intellectual structure of
> our
> > finding aids. Indeed, with large and complex collections which may have
> two
> > or more series containing subseries of similar materials, it's a very
> useful
> > way of clarifying which records belong to which series. Below is an
> example
> > of how we've been encoding our series/subseries titles:
> >
> > <c01><unittitle>Series 1: Correspondence,
> > <unitdate>1913-1978</unitdate></unittitle>
> >
> > <c02>><unittitle>1.1: New York Office Correspondence,
> > <unitdate>1917-1930</unitdate></unittitle></c02>
> >
> > <c02>><unittitle>1.2: Paris Office Correspondence,
> > <unitdate>1913-1922</unitdate></unittitle></c02>
> >
> > </c01>
> >
> > Although we believe the practice of numbering series/subseries is fairly
> > common practice in archives, we've been unable to find many examples of
> > EAD-encoded finding aids on the web that show these numbers in their
> > unittitles. Is it considered bad practice to include an assigned
> > series/subseries number in the <unittitle>? I understand that, strictly
> > speaking, "Series 1" is not, for example, part of the unittitle for
> records
> > labeled "Correspondence," but since a series title is essentially a term
> > created by the archivist anyway, how big of a tagging sin is it to add a
> > numerical value to that term? Can anyone foresee any problems with us
> > continuing to encode our series/subseries titles in this way,
> particulary in
> > regard to sharing our finding aids down the road?
> >
> > Thanks for any input you can give us,
> >
> > Stephanie
> >
> >
> > Stephanie Ashley
> > Project Archivist
> > Archives of American Art
> > Smithsonian Institution
> > 202-275-1672
> > [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> >
> >
>
|