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We are using the Perl program listed on the SAA's Tools and Helper Files webpage, at https://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/tools.html . The program is called tri-XMLdate-normalizer.pl ( http://monkey.org/%7Ecaz/TRI-scripts/tri-XMLdate-normalizer.pl ) and works beautifully. Once you have it set up, which is quite easy once you understand how the Perl processor works, you can normalize (@normal="iso8601 value") dates in a finding aid within minutes. Good luck. Joseph Greene Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive Project (HII), James Joyce Library, UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4. (t) 01 716 7506 (e) [log in to unmask] (w) www.ucd.ie/ivrla ----- Original Message ----- From: Richard Davis <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 11:46 pm Subject: Re: Normalization of Dates - clarification To: [log in to unmask] > Michele Combs wrote: > > As far as the way the visible date is written, I would think that > you> need not bother changing that at all unless you have more time > and money > > than you know what to do with; we don't usually alter the way the > dates> appear in legacy finding aids when we do conversion, unless > for some > > reason it affects the usefulness of the finding aid (e.g. if the > format> is so vague as to be uninterpretable or ambiguous enough to > lead to more > > than one interpretation). > > Hi > > Just thought I'd say that normalising dates needn't be a completely > manual and painful process: programming can come to your (finding) > aid. > With a comparatively simple script one could parse EAD files, > isolate > the non-normalised date elements, and generate new normalised > dates. > Perl's DateManip module, for example, can reliably identify a wide > range of dates in vernacular forms, and output them in ISO8601 or > what > you will. You'd still need to verify the output, but if there's > nothing > too kinky, it might reliably do the lot. > > http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~sbeck/DateManip.html#examples > > Little scripts can speed things up a lot - try to find a friendly > hacker > to write you one! :) > > Normalising dates may not be a pressing imperative, if your present > system merely displays them, but posterity is likely to be grateful > if > it starts wanting to sort or search collections, or do other > analysis, > based on date-like properties. > > Hope this helps > > Richard > > > -- > / Richard M. Davis > \ Digital Archives Specialist > / University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) > \ 20 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1DZ > / +44 (0) 20 7692 1350 > / [log in to unmask] >