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Hi Ryan,
Working at an independent historical society with no IT staff and a archives
staff with little technical background, I can completely understand what you
are going through.  We started implementing EAD last year.  Our staff has
been using the EAD Xforms tool created by Justin Banks (Available at:
http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/ead/tools.html).  It has taken our staff
some training it get used to using it and to ensure that they type
everything in the proper format, but otherwise it has been pretty
successful.  My problem has been keeping up with all the individual files,
making sure they validate, and then putting them online.
I've been looking into implementing Archivists Toolkit at our institution,
since it's database format will allow us to keep all our records in one
place and then export as needed.  I have been very successful importing the
finding aids that we created using Justin Banks' template, and MARC records
from our online catalog (with the help of MarcEdit -
http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/index.php).  I have not yet
experimented with allowing some of our less tech savvy archivists or
volunteers use Archivists Toolkit, though, so I'm not sure how easy or
difficult it will be for them to understand.

Good Luck!

Suzanne Maggard
Special Collections Assistant
The Filson Historical Society
1310 S. Third Street
Louisville, KY 40208
[log in to unmask]

On 4/23/08, Ryan Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>  Hi all,
>
> This is my first posting to this list.
>
> I am a new hire with a little EAD experience who has been asked to
> implement encoding finding aids in EAD.  EAD exists in a very simplified
> form currently, but it is only created in a simple database that is tied to
> the MARC record that supposedly can be exported into EAD, but we would like
> to do more.  The problem is that most of the staff here have little to no
> experience in XML, and much of the work of processing and creating finding
> aids is done by volunteers who have little to no experience with XML or
> technology in general.  Both parties also seem to suffer from a bit of
> techniphobia.  I am need of ideas to sort of break down this barrier and
> bridge the technology gap.
>
> My question is:  Does anybody have experience in training volunteers or
> technphobes in EAD?  Any success stories?  Are there tools out there that
> make it so you can do EAD without having to know XML, or where you don't
> have to use an XML editor?  I know about the Archivist's Toolkit and a
> couple other similar software programs, but I don't know enough about them
> to see if they fit our needs.  In general, are there any ideas out there
> from past experience for making EAD easier to learn and more intuitive
> without making it too simplified?
>
> In my EAD experience, we had a template and guidelines to follow, but we
> had to do the encoding in an XML editor and had to know a little about XML
> in order to be successful.  I am trying to make it as painless as possible
> without compromising too much.  Is that possible?
>
> Thank you for any answers to these questions that you can provide.
>
> Ryan
>
> Ryan K. Lee
> Metadata Specialist
> LDS Church History Dept.
> 50 E. North Temple Rm. 289E
> Salt Lake City, UT 84150
> (801) 240-2173
> [log in to unmask]
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