Hi Mike,
I have relied on the @type in <dsc> a great deal in the past. In a
previous job, I used it to determine where the series descriptions were
presented. We did the legacy markup and display for a consortium
consisting of roughly 10-12 institutions, most of which presented the
series descriptions (using <dsc type="analyticover"> first and then
followed with the full container list (in a second <dsc> with the @type
as "in-depth"). However, some institutions later offered newer finding
aids that presented the descriptions in a multilevel manner. Only one
institution used multilevel description throughout all their finding
aids. I used <dsc type="combined"> in both of these situations, and
presented the series descriptions in the container list in a multilevel
fashion whenever the stylesheet happened upon the //dsc[@type='combined'].
These days I just use "combined" by default to present the descriptions
in a multilevel fashion. It's just that after reading Chris Prom's
recent user study, and reflecting upon others such as those done by
Stevens, Yakel, Duff, and Gilliland-Swetland, I've started to wonder
whether this information sometimes belongs closer to the frontmatter
depending on the size of the description and the level of archival
experience the user possesses. They've all addressed this issue, but
the question is when to move this date element and and where to put it.
I guess I'll just implement some sort of nifty script to make these
descriptions appear whenever/wherever the user wants them within the
finding aid. I've seen blogs that use DHTML to change or update CSS and
XSL to appease a reader's desired viewing environment, so maybe
something similar could be useful when dealing with disparate
communities such as newbies, genealogists, academic historians, etc.
Clay
Mike Ferrando wrote:
>Have you found some method whereby this attribute value can be used?
>
>Mike Ferrando
>Library of Congress
>Washington, DC
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