A couple of comments, marked by ###. I've deleted passages from the
original message that I'm not commenting on:
>John Bewley wrote:
>> Any help or opinions on the following would be greatly appreciated:
>
>I'm always happy to give my opinion, especially in regards to
>linking elements and EAD ;)
>
>> RLG, LC, NWDA guidelines all state that <daogrp> is recommended
>>for use for all linking to digital objects from collections, rather
>>than <dao>. Does this leave any uses of <dao> as recommended
>>practice?
>
>I have found, in practice, that for simple type links (where you are
>only linking to one item rather than multiple versions of the same
>item), <dao> is much easier to encode since you are just dealing
>with the one element (and possibly a child <daodesc> element)
>instead of the multiple required sub-elements of <daogrp>. This
>might make your EAD encoders happier!
### This has been our experience. We typically handle digital object
display and navigation in other systems (image and text databases),
so we always have single links rather than "groups" of them. <dao>
seems to make better semantic sense in this case. The Tag Library
seems to agree, calling <daogrp> "A wrapper element that contains two
or more related Digital Archival Object Locations...", though this is
not enforced by the DTD - one <daoloc> seems to be valid.
RLG seems to provide a little wiggle room on this, first dictating
that <daogrp> be used exclusively, but then acknowledging that since
digital objects may be managed outside the EAD environment, "we do
not want to imply that <daogrp> is the only legitimate way to handle
digitized objects..."
>> Tag Library examples show <daogrp> stated within <did>. It could
>>also be stated within <scopecontent> or <c0X). Has anybody
>>developed a rationale for stating <daogrp) anyplace other than
>><did>?
>
>We have embedded DAO objects within <bioghist>. It's also available
>in <odd> in addition to <scopecontent> as you state. This would be
>at the top of my wish list for future revisions to the EAD schema.
>I have resorted to using <linkgrp> or <extref><extptr> when
>necessary as a work around. The linking concepts are the same, so
>it's just a matter of being able to identify these as DAO links
>later on.
### I'm skating on thin ice here, since I'm not an archivist, but it
seems odd to me to have the digital object as a child of <did>. It
doesn't seem to me to be part of the description of materials, but
rather the material itself. I suppose one could argue about the
ontological status of surrogates vs. the source materials, but from
its description in the Tag library, <did> seems to be a metadata
container. For that reason, we make the digital object its sibling
rather than its child.
>> entityref vs. href - in the case of links to digital objects from
>>container lists (as opposed to logos or illustrations), does the
>>use of entityref have any benefits over the use of href in <daoloc>
>>statements? Does the use of entityref entail certain
>>vulnerabilities concerning the contribution of finding aids to
>>shared, or regional databases of finding aids?
>
>I would recommend not using entity references for many reasons but
>mainly because the HREF attribute is a required attribute in XLink
>elements, so the EAD schema requires it (while the DTD doesn't). So
>you should make all of your XLink elements XLink compliant.
### We tend to use entity references, mainly so that we can maintain
the links outside the body of the markup. This may be a habit held
over from the SGML days, where external entity management was
standard procedure.
--
_______________________________
Peter C. Gorman
Head, University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center
218 Memorial Library
Madison, WI 53706
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(608) 265-5291
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