Amy,
Are you talking about physically rearranging the materials or only
their description?
If the former, is the underlying question actually this- is it
permissible to organize materials in a hierarchical manner that were not
originally so arranged?
Description, if that is what is meant, should follow arrangement.
While EAD offers a mechanism for reflecting complex hierarchies, many
collections in my experience are very flat in their organization and do not
need such structures. A collection may not be divisible into series but
consist simply of a group of files or even simply discrete items. And this
is not limited to very small collections. We have one large collection that
could be characterized as a single series comprised of many individual,
discrete files whose listing runs to over 900 pages.
EAD does not demand a certain arrangement but only wishes to provide
a way to reflect what is there. There may be only two levels of hierarchy-
the description of the whole and the description of the individual parts.
Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Amy McCrory [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 10:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: question about re-engineering
Has anyone, in attempting to re-engineer legacy finding aids for EAD
compatibility, encountered resistance on the basis that re-ordering of
elements into series and other hierarchical levels would violate the
creator's original order?
Amy McCrory
Archivist
Cartoon Research Library
Ohio State University
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