One of the issues that came up with the audience="internal" attribute was
that we were using it in two different ways:

1. For elements that truly contained "internal - repository access only"
information that should not be displayed on a public webserver.

2. For elements that should not be displayed, but do not contain
"internal - repository access only" information.

If I'm understanding it correctly, usage #1 is the only correct usage for
this attribute according to the EAD tag library.  Using it as a mechanism
for "display/no display" does not appear to me to be correct usage if the
element does not contain information that is for "repository access only".

In order to isolate the elements that contain true "internal" information,
you must be able to distinguish between the two usages.  I am writing a
script to strip out all elements that contain true "internal" information
before the finding aids are submitted to the web/regional databases, but
we don't want to strip out the elements that fall into category 2.  Some
webservers display the actual xml elements when viewing the "source" in a
web browser, so having this ability to isolate elements is pretty
important.

So I proposed using the altrender attribute for elements that fall into
category 2: ones that should not display, but should remain in the finding
aid for whatever reason.

Another suggestion was to use a 'type' attribute to indicate display.
This would also work, except that 'altrender' is a more widely available
attribute.  Also, 'altrender' seems to be a more appropriate attribute to
encode display information.  Using a 'type' attribute would require the
attribute to serve a dual purpose which could cause problems down the
road should you want to change to way these 'type' attributes function.

Mark Carlson
Computer Support Analyst
Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives
University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington

On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Bill Landis wrote:

> Hi Jodi,
>
> Congrats on being almost finished with your BPG revision! A couple questions and suggestions.
>
> First, I don't think the use you intend for AUDIENCE is an improper use at all. If you want something not to display, using audience="internal" is the mechanism in EAD for making that happen. Using altrender="nodisplay" might work as well. But the clincher for both is less a matter of what EAD allows (both approaches would be legal EAD encoding), and more a matter of what the NWDA system will actually be able to make happen. You can have all the audience="internal"s in the world in your finding aid, but if your system can't recognize that attribute and strip out tags that contain it prior to rendering a file for display, your internal will be external.
>
> For your filing title, maybe you could consider a way to get it into the <eadheader>, which most finding aid displays don't include anyway, so it seems like an easier place to tuck information that you want available for indexing or list generating, rather than for display. <notestmt> is a nice open-ended place to stash things like this. You might also use the <?filetitle ...> processing instruction approach (just before the initial <ead> tag) that the OAC uses. But again, how you approach this is completely dependent on what the system that is processing and rendering your EAD-encoded finding aids can do.
>
> As far as local topical subject terms, the OAC used to tuck local California Digital Library terms that were needed for the CDL Directory into <notestmt>, which worked fairly well. If you are going to use these terms to help NWDA end users get access to your finding aids, though, I guess I'd wonder why you want to hide these terms from end users? Why not just make it easy and display these with the rest of the <controlaccess> terms used under some heading like "Northwest Digital Archive Subject Access Terms"?
>
> Cheers!
>
> Bill
>
>
> --
> | Bill Landis
> | Manuscripts Librarian, Special Collections and Archives
> | The UCI Libraries, University of California
> | P.O. Box 19557, Irvine, CA 92623-9557
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>