We decided to update and/or correct the finding aids and MARC records as we do the conversion. It does take a little longer but not much, and in the long run I think it's more efficient since you only have to do one pass through the records instead of two. Updates and corrections include things like altering the title if it's incorrect, adding fields (e.g. 856, 041, 655, etc), and other things to make the EAD and MARC match. Occasionally in a few drastic cases when the MARC is very badly off, we'll replace the old MARC record with a new one generated from the EAD.

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..Michele Combs..
..Manuscripts Librarian..
..Special Collections Research Center..
..E.S. Bird Library..
..Syracuse University..
..222 Waverly Ave...
..Syracuse, NY 13244..
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From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Deena Schwimmer
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 4:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EADs for legacy finding aids

I'm wondering what others are doing when creating EADs for legacy collections that were documented with earlier standards. Do you make the EAD match the old documentation for consistency, or use the new standard and update your documentation/MARC records for consistency, or just not worry about consistency in these cases?

A related question is if the documentation was never really correct. We have many old collections that misused Papers vs Collection vs Records, as well as some other guidelines for creating collection titles. I instinctively want to correct them when creating the EADs, but may be creating more work for myself than I can support if I have to make everything consistent.