The excellent discussion with contributions from Clay, Stephen, Alejandro
and Terry concerning the development of EAD schemas is quite timely. The
U.S. National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)
recently announced the awarding of a grant to the Society of American
Archivists EADWG to further development of EAD. The proposal describes the
work as follows:
"This work will be focused on revisions to the Encoded Archival Description
Application Guidelines, development of a formal Schema, identification and
development of toolkits and stylesheets for smaller repositories, and
articulating the groundwork for long-term maintenance and support of this
standard."
I will be coordinating a team of archival technical experts developing one
or more official EAD schemas. Other members of the EADWG will be
coordinating other activities funded in the grant.
The work on EAD schemas is to commence immediately and, if all goes well,
is expected to take approximately a year. As the work gets underway, input
will be sought from the EAD user community (using the EAD listserv) in
order to ensure that the final product addresses the needs of the
community. As work progresses, draft (or experimental) versions of the
schemas will be made available for testing and comment.
All of the issues and challenges described in the recent messages are a
very good starting point for the EAD schema development team.
Daniel
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