Thanks for your input Michael - I too thought that perhaps <subject> was
the least stretch under the circumstances, although I like your
suggestion of using <table>. Our EAD documents are only used here at
the moment, but I would like them to be harvestable which is why I was
uncomfortable using <subject>. If this kind of index was something we
did a lot of, that would be one thing, but this is the only one (I'm
pretty sure), so I don't mind using a more generic tag - I would prefer
that to something that is inaccurate. I can imagine that the situation
of having a somewhat unconventional index might not be altogether
unheard of - perhaps in the future there might be a very generic tag
"indexable matter" tag for those things that don't fit anywhere else.
I think I will give <table> a shot.
Thanks again,
Leah Prescott
Manuscripts and Archives Librarian
Collections Information Technology Coordinator
MYSTIC SEAPORT
The Museum of America and the Sea
G.W. Blunt White Library
75 Greenmanville Avenue
PO Box 6000
Mystic CT 06355-0990
tel: 860.572.0711 x5263
fax: 860.572.5394
[log in to unmask]
http://www.mysticseaport.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Fox, Michael
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 12:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: date index
Leah,
In looking at your document, it looks to me like you have a two
column index where the index entry has a name, place, or date as its
first element. Your solution to include the date element as subject is
hardly the greatest sin in EAD encoding, especially given the fact that
date would be a reasonable child for <indexentry>. One might argue that
the date is really serving as a subject in this case though strictly
speaking that is not haw
subject is defined in EAD. Perhaps a future version of EAD can be
expanded
to add <date> here.
For those who asked for an explanation for the absence of <date> in
this situation in anticipation of some principled and nuanced statement,
I can only suggest that not every contingency in life can be or was
anticipated.
Alternatively, one could encode this as a <table> within <index> and
avoid any indexing ambiguity that might occur if you are making some
other use of all text encoded as <subject>.
Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Leah Prescott [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 10:00 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: date index
Yeah, thanks Michael, I realized that I had done that after I posted - I
actually knew this but in all of the variations of things that I was
trying, I forgot. In the end, it didn't matter because with what I was
trying to do, even putting it inside <index> instead of <indexentry>
didn't work for me. I tried the suggestions of Tomas and Marc and with
both cases I was able to get the document to validate, but unfortunately
I was not able to get the data to show up in a transform (using an
edited version of the EAD cookbook stylesheets). I thought I had
probably posted enough to the list, so I just went and used a <subject/>
inside <indexentry>. But if anyone has suggestions for how they would
deal with this kind of thing, the finding aid as it stands now is at:
http://www.mysticseaport.org/library/manuscripts/coll/coll001/coll001.ht
ml
Leah Prescott
Manuscripts and Archives Librarian
Collections Information Technology Coordinator
MYSTIC SEAPORT
The Museum of America and the Sea
G.W. Blunt White Library
75 Greenmanville Avenue
PO Box 6000
Mystic CT 06355-0990
tel: 860.572.0711 x5263
fax: 860.572.5394
[log in to unmask]
http://www.mysticseaport.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Fox, Michael
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 4:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: date index
Leah,
Please reread your initial question. You said the tag library
shows
that <chronlist> may occur within <index>.
<index>
<chronlist>...</chronlist>
</index>
That is true but it is not what you have below which is-
<index>
<indexentry>
<chronlist>...</chronlist>
</indexentry>
</index>
Perhaps if we could see more of your finding aid, readers of the list
might be able to suggest alternative solutions.
Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Leah Prescott [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:20 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: date index
Well, this is what I have:
<index>
<head>Index to Dates</head>
<p>blah, blah, blah</p>
<indexentry>
<chronlist>
<chronitem>
<date>1906 Dec 3</date>
<event>G12</event>
</chronitem>
</chronlist>
</indexentry>
</index>
and XMLSpy tells me that <chronlist> is an unexpected child element - do
I have them nested incorrectly?
Leah Prescott
Manuscripts and Archives Librarian
Collections Information Technology Coordinator
MYSTIC SEAPORT
The Museum of America and the Sea
G.W. Blunt White Library
75 Greenmanville Avenue
PO Box 6000
Mystic CT 06355-0990
tel: 860.572.0711 x5263
fax: 860.572.5394
[log in to unmask]
http://www.mysticseaport.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of J. Tomás Nogales
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:44 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: date index
Hello, Leah.
Note that the content model for <index> is:
-----
<!ELEMENT index (head?, (address | chronlist | list | note | table |
blockquote | p)*, ((listhead?, indexentry+) | index+))>
-----
and therefore, within an <index> element you MUST use one or more
<indexentry> elements (or an <index> child element), AFTER your
<chronlist> if you use it. The message from XMLSpy will disappear if you
do so.
Maybe you are trying to insert your <chronlist> in the wrong place.
Note that <chronlist> may appear within more than 30 other elements too,
without loss of hyperlink ability: your <date>s can contain ptr's and
your <event>s can contain all the ref's you need as well.
Excuse my english.
Best regards,
Tomás.
Leah Prescott wrote:
> I am in the process of converting our finding aids from EAD version 1
> to version 2. One of the things that I am happy about is that I can
> now imbed indexes right into the finding aid - previously we had
> separate html indexes and when a person found the index through
> Google, for instance, it wasn't always clear exactly what they were
> looking at. My problem is that we have one collection that has an
> important index to dates. In looking at the tag library I see that a
> <chronlist> may occur within an <index> element but when I try to do
> this I get an error message from XMLSpy that it is an unexpected child
> element. Do I need to edit my copy of the DTD to do this, or am I
> missing something? Does anyone else have any date indexes within a
> finding aid and do you put it somewhere other than <index>?
>
>
> Leah Prescott
> Manuscripts and Archives Librarian
> Collections Information Technology Coordinator
>
> MYSTIC SEAPORT
> The Museum of America and the Sea
> G.W. Blunt White Library
> 75 Greenmanville Avenue
> PO Box 6000
> Mystic CT 06355-0990
>
> tel: 860.572.0711 x5263
> fax: 860.572.5394
> [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> http://www.mysticseaport.org
--
------------------------------+--------------------------------
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Dpto. Bibl. y Documentacion | fax: (+34) 91 624 92 12
UNIV. CARLOS III DE MADRID | e-mail: [log in to unmask]
C/ Madrid, 126 | http://www.bib.uc3m.es/~nogales
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