Hello:

A couple of points arising from recent encoding of finding aids.

1) Non availability of <date> within <physdesc>
There are quite a few occasions on which a <date> would be useful within this field (and perhaps its subfields),
such as

Leather, blind tooled binding of 1750.
Bound in a parchment deed dated 2 October 1685.
Paper watermark 1820.

The watermark date is often given when there is no other means of dating a document, so this could be the only
part of an entry that indicates its date.

2) A <unitloc> attribute that indicates it is the page/folio of a volume would be useful.  At present the loctype
options are repository and container.  It seems a sensible progression to move another level in and allow placement
within an individual item.  This reflects several of my earlier comments about the EAD being designed more for
loose papers than bound volumes.  Documents within a volume tend to be identified by <unitloc> rather than
<unitid>, so the <unitloc> becomes the prime means for referring to an item.  With a bound volume containing
perhaps fifty or more items, it gets rather long winded using otherloctype so often.

Any thoughts?

Richard Higgins
Durham University Library