Date: Tue, 26 Dec 1995 09:25:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Helena Zinkham <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: some DTD answers, 2


It's a sunny, crisply cold day here -- might even snow.  Somehow my thoughts
turned to EAD instead of roasting chestnuts.  Or, maybe too many sweet
cookies brought out a longing for harder fare.   Here you go: Title Pages
and Scope Content View.

TITLE PAGE question, trying to recall how it became its own element.  We
had talked as a group about ongoing dependence on a local printed copy of
a finding aid, and, wanting to produce them with ease.  Researchers may
need to use a printed copy with a microfilm, or, reference staff need
something easy to xerox or mail to a donor.  (Signing onto a computer for
every query, and printing out selected 'pages' is still hard to imagine
until we get more computers, at least around here.  Trust computers?  For
some things, but not all.)

While we agreed that 'facsimile' of current printed output is not a goal
for this DTD, we did want to be able to have a 'page' that would help
those who need a printed title page without having to hand-produce them
separately from the DTD finding aid.  I suppose we could include them when
crafting the new finding aids, print it out, then throw it away before
SGML coding; but, I was also hoping we might be building the finding aids
in an SGML editor.

I hadn't thought of this 'title page' as needing any subelements; the
coded data would all be conveyed through the header.   This page is a
typographical convenience for ensuring that a local printed aid can still
have a cover sheet.  Is it possible that 'remote' users would also want
to print a finding aid, and, having the title page element makes it
easier for them to capture that type of data on paper legibly, rather
than print the header? print the screens that display the header?

Perhaps there's also a sense that different softwares will read the DTD
data and display title-page type information differently?  So keeping the
'title page' element ensures that the information a repository wanted to
put on its 'title page' is at least displayable as a page of information
kept together?

The 'title page' discussion interests me, even though the divisions I've
worked in never did much with title pages for local finding aids, because it
symbolizes how unknown the pieces of the online finding aid system remain,
despite all of Daniel's good demos: how will the finding aids be created
(yeah, different ways, some in word processing or database software then
coded later; some in SGML authoring tools); how will they be displayed
(hardware and software); will there actually be a printer by each computer
(not at LC anyway).

SCOPE-CONTENT VIEW: I finally remembered that scope-content element is
needed under "CV" as well.   You know, those item-level checklists, or
even series descriptions in the pictorial world will often have
scope-content information.   Can the Scope-Content View element be used
under "CV"?  Or, do tag such information as a "note"?