Dear EAD subscribers,
We think you'll be interested in trying out RLG's new finding
aid access service during the free preview. Just go to
http://www.rlg.org/demo/arr.html
We are very interested in your reactions -- and if you'd like your
finding aids to be included, we hope you'll let us know that, too.
Ricky Erway, RLG
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New Archival Resources Access: August Preview
-- Single-point, integrated access to archival
collections' cataloging and full-text finding aids
-- Available on the Web through enhanced RLG Eureka system
-- Invitation to try out prior to September 1, 1998
The Research Libraries Group (RLG) would like to share information
about a new online resource and invites you to look at it.
To do so, go to the RLG Web site directory at
http://www.rlg.org/toc.html and click on the link under "Recent
Additions." (Use www.thames.rlg.org for access from the UK and
Europe; try www.ohio.rlg.org from other overseas locations.)
Archival Resources offers students, faculty, librarians, archivists,
and other scholars centralized, Web-based access to significant
primary sources located in repositories throughout the world. It
includes cataloging of collections of archives, manuscripts, oral
histories, rare books, and other difficult-to-locate materials,
_plus_ a continually growing set of finding aids -- the detailed
collection guides or inventories that reveal where a collection came
from, how it is organized, and what it contains.
These finding aids have been converted to online form and tagged
using the emerging standard for Encoded Archival Description (EAD),
an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
(Steps RLG has taken to help foster adoption of the EAD standard and
to foster archival research on the World Wide Web include its
Finding Aids SGML Training -- FAST -- workshops for members, receipt
of a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation grant supporting members'
finding aids conversion efforts, and an arrangement with Apex Data
Services, Inc. to provide quality text conversion and encoding of
finding aids.)
Archival Resources' content currently comes from institutions in
North America and the UK. Already a unique combination of
information from archives, universities, and the Library of
Congress, it will have additional finding aids when the service goes
into production in September, with continuing additions thereafter.
The cataloging in Archival Resources comes from RLG's Archival and
Mixed Collections (AMC) bibliographic file. The full-text finding
aids are indexed centrally at RLG but are not necessarily stored
there; some reside on an RLG server, others live on servers at
contributing institutions. The newest generation of the Eureka
searching interface enables users to work with both catalog records
and finding aids in a single search.
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