I have an Acceptable Range of Uniform Practice (ARUP)
question to raise to the group.  Here at Stanford, we have
been encoding our finding aids down to the folder level and
have been using <C0x> tags for both the intellectual as
well as the physical description of our materials in a
non-tabular layout. While this works well for our needs, I
have been informed that this is not acceptable practice in
terms of ARUP.

For sake of discussion, let me outline how we would tag a
hypothetical portion of a finding aid.

Series I : Correspondence
        Subseries: Chronological files
                Box     Folder  Title
                1       1       1888
                1       2       1889
                .       .       .
                .       .       .
                .       .       .
                1       10      1896
                2       1       1897
                2       2       1898

        Subseries: Alphabetical files
                2       3       A
                2       4       B
                2       5       C

We would tag this as follows:

<C01 level="series">
<did><unitid>I</unitid>
<unitttitle>Correspondence</unittitle></did>

<C02 level="subseries">
<did><unittitle>Chronological files</unittitle></did>

<C03 label="Box No.">
<did><unitloc>1</unitloc></did>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>1</unitloc><unittitle>1888</unittitle></did>
</C04>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>2</unitloc><unittitle>1889</unittitle></did>
</C04>

.
.
.
<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>10</unitloc><unittitle>1896</unittitle></did>
</C04></C03>


<C03 label="Box No.">
<did><unitloc>2</unitloc></did>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>1</unitloc><unittitle>1897</unittitle></did>
</C04>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>2</unitloc><unittitle>1898</unittitle></did>
</C04>
</C03>
</C02>

<C02 level="subseries">
<did><unittitle>Alphabetical files</unittitle></did>

<C03 label="Box No.">
<did><unitloc>2</unitloc></did>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>3</unitloc><unittitle>A</unittitle></did>
</C04>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>4</unitloc><unittitle>B</unittitle></did>
</C04>

<C04 label="Folder No.>
<did><unitloc>5</unitloc><unittitle>C</unittitle></did>
</C04>
</C03>
</C02>
</C01>

What attracts me to this particular encoding schema is that
(1) it provides us with a work-around to the concurrency
problem by making the physical subordinate to the
intellectual arrangement while at the same time allowing
us to indicate when series break across boxes, (2) it
eliminates the ambiguity problem associated with using
<unitloc>'s at the same <C0> level for both boxes AND
folders, items, etc., and (3) it allows us to construct
style sheets that represent the folder information as a
list within a box rather than repeating the box information
endlessly.

We have gotten Panorama Pro to display files with this form
of encoding as follows:

Series I : Correspondence
        Subseries: Chronological files
                Box 1
                        Folder 1        1888
                        Folder 2        1889
                        .
                        .
                        .
                        Folder 10       1896
                Box 2
                        Folder  1       1897
                        Folder  2       1898

        Subseries: Alphabetical files
                Box 2
                        Folder  3       A
                        Folder  4       B
                        Folder  5       C


I would invite comments and input on this issue.

Thanks,

Steve

********************************
Steven Mandeville-Gamble
Special Collections Librarian for Manuscripts Processing
Dept. of Special Collections
Stanford University Libraries
Phone: (415) 725-3478    Fax: (415) 723-8690
Email: [log in to unmask]
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