Hi all:
In doing the EAD training for the Northwest Digital Archives and being very
involved with the NWDA Best Practices, I'm hearing requests from our
Northwest Archival Processing Initiative members (who are a test bed for the
Greene/Meissner minimal-level processing) for some examples of EAD encoding
of finding aids from minimal-level processing.
Although we are not very proscriptive in our standards beyond the <archdesc>
level, we need some degree of uniformity so that our stylesheet works well.
I know that for many institutions, the descriptions are by the box at a
<c01> or <c02> level, with or without series divisions. Since the box is not
considered an intellectual level, this doesn't fit so neatly into the known
<c0x> levels in EAD.
I have seen two different solutions to this, and thought of another:
1. From Mark Shelstad at the University of Wyoming: Specify both the c01 and
c02 level as file, with the second designating a subject within a box. This
treats the box as a file, which is intellectually perfectly sensible.
<c01 level="file>
<did>
<unittitle>[title]</unittitle>
</did>
<scopecontent>[sc note]</scopecontent>
<c02 level="file">
<did>
<container type="box">[number]</container>
<unittitle>[title]</unittitle>
<unitdate>[date]</unitdate>
</c02>
</c01>
2. From Donna McCrea at the University of Montana: Specify the c01 as
series, tag the box as c02, but don't specify a level. As Michael Fox has
recently observed on this list, not specifying a level below series may not
matter.
<c01 level="series">
<did>
<unitid>[series #]</unitid>
<unittitle>[title]</unittitle>
<unitdate>[date]</unitdate>
</did>
<c02>
<did>
<container type="box">[box #]</container>
<unittitle>[title]</unittitle>
</did>
<scopecontent><p>[text]</p></scopecontent>
</c02>
</c01>
3. My thought, which may be theoretically correct in some ways but elevates
the box to an intellectual unit, which is not consistent with accepted
theory of archival arrangement. This example would be for a collection
without series and with a list of subjects contained in a boxes, but could
also apply at the c02 level if there were series:
<c01 level="otherlevel" otherlevel="box">
<did><container type="box">Box 1</container><unitdate>[date]</unitdate>
</did>
<scopecontent>[scope and content note: usually list of
subjects]</scopecontent>
</c01>
Are there other examples of a box-level description out there? Any comments
on the relative merits of these solutions would be much appreciated as well.
Best, Jodi
--
Jodi Allison-Bunnell
Consortium Administrator
Northwest Digital Archives
Oregon State University
418 Woodford
Missoula, MT 59801
(Yes, this is really my address!)
(971) 327-8134
Fax (860) 540-8281
[log in to unmask]
|