Another vote for care in taking any steps to avoid apparent redundancy. It may cause problems not only in somebody else's system now, but in a future system that you (or your institution) might build or adopt. When trying to add credibility to this point of view, I sometimes use this quote from Elaine Svenonius in the "Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization" [MIT Press; 2000] a book that goes into cataloging history and the principles behind many cataloging rules and practices in a thorough analysis -- reflecting on problem areas as well as on the wisdom that has stood the test of time. P 93 and footnote 15 "... the use of one device to serve multiple functions, ... while favored by the principle of parsimony, nevertheless introduces a lack of flexibility that can become an obstacle as technology changes. [15] When technology changes, so do means to ends. It can happen that one of the functions performed by a multifunctional device could be better achieved by other means." As you can probably tell from the quote, the book is long, somewhat abstract, and not a particularly easy read, but as someone who has tangled fairly extensively with heterogeneous descriptive records, I found it enlightening and even fascinating. Don't skip the footnotes. Caroline Arms [log in to unmask] Office of Strategic Initiatives Library of Congress On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Fox, Michael wrote: > I strongly support Stephen's reply with regard to redundancy. This > question is often raised in our EAD workshops- why do I need to include > things like <head> and <arrangement> when I can automatically generate them > during output? My first reply is that you can but you cannot be sure that > someone else will. What is an obvious solution when the file is living on > your server and you can supply all the bells in whistles, may create > problems in a shared environment such as consortial database where there are > other assumptions about the availability of certain data elements that might > drive displays. > > Another argument for greater consistency in encoding, probably driven by > some generally accepted and widely implemented content and encoding > protocol. But until that halcyon day- > > Michael >