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Sticking with a traditional <dsc> structure for born digital materials doesn't mean you have to impose a Box/Folder structure. You can define <container> as broadly as you want, since you have control over the list of values for the attribute @type. At the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, the controlled list of terms for @type contains over 30 values. While "box" and "folder" are two choices, other choices include "digfolder" (Digital Folder) and "digitem" (Digital Item). Materials in a Digital Folder/Item are only available digitally, through the finding aid.

Either a <dao> or a <daogrp> may occur within any of your <c#> components, a <did> or a <scopecontent>. So you've got a lot of encoding options within your components. At the Southern Historical Collection, if there is a digitized version of an analog item, historically a <daogrp> has been encoded in the component's <scopecontent>:

<c03>
����� <did>
������ <container type="folder">5</container>
������ <unittitle><unitdate type="inclusive">1795</unitdate></unittitle>
����� </did>
����� <scopecontent>
������� <daogrp>
��������� <daodesc>
����������� <p>Digital version: Letter from John and Ebenezer Pettigrew to Charles Pettigrew, 3 October 1795</p>
��������� </daodesc>
��������� <daoloc role="thumbnail" href="http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv_images/das1.gif" title="Documenting the��������
������������ American South"/>
������� <daoloc role="reference" href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/true/mss01-03/mss01-03.html"/>
������� </daogrp>
����� </scopecontent>
</c03>

If it were born digital material, however, the same could be encoded like this (assuming it was only one item in this case instead of a folder of items with only one digitized, as was the case in the above example):

<c03>
����� <did>
������ <container type="digitem">5</container>
������ <unittitle><unitdate type="inclusive">1795</unitdate></unittitle>
����� </did>
������� <daogrp>
��������� <daoloc role="thumbnail" href="http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv_images/das1.gif" title="Documenting the��������
������������ American South"/>
�������� <daoloc role="reference" href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/true/mss01-03/mss01-03.html"/>
������� </daogrp>
������� <scopecontent>
����������� <p>Letter from John and Ebenezer Pettigrew to Charles Pettigrew, 3 October 1795</p>
�������� </scopecontent>
</c03>

You could have the <daogrp> within the <did> and still validate.

But you don't have to use the <dao>. For example, the Southern Historical Collection encodes all of the oral history interviews that are available digitally in the Southern Oral History Program finding aid (which contains over 4,000 oral histories!) with <extref>. Some of these have been digitized, some were born digital. If an interview is available digitally, the text in <container> is encoded in <extref> and appears as a link, leading to the audio and/or transcript of the interview in ContentDM:

<c04>
����� <did>
���������� <container type="interview">
������������������ <extref href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/linktothisinterview.com">A-0230</extref>
���������� </container>
���������� <unittitle>Florida: <persname>De Grove, John</persname>: Political scientist</unittitle>
���� </did>
</c04>

One issue to consider with materials that you are making available in digital format only is how to best present that information to the user within the finding aid. People might be used to collections being available either fully are partially in digital format, in addition to being available in the reading room. They may also be familiar with a digitized collection being available only digitally (preservation of the originals, etc). What they are not familiar with is parts of collection that is otherwise available only physically being available only digitally. That's a bit mind-boggling. But we'll be dealing with it more and more as born digital materials start flooding in alongside our coffee-stained subject files. Are you going to add a note of some sort to each component that's digital only, warning patrons? If so, will your note be an <accessrestrict> or something else? Will you instead alert users at the top of these finding aids that portions of the collection are only available digitally? Say nothing and hope they don't notice there's weirdness going on? Or when born digital materials come in, are we making analog access copies and not even delivering them digitally because we don't yet have the mechanisms in place? There's only so many <dao> you can encode by hand before you need a better system.

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Jay Burton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I am writing to learn of others' experience in creating EADs for materials
and collections that are "born digital."

In particular:

1- �How do you arrange your <dsc>? (Do you impose a Box/Folder structure on
the material or do you have some other organization?)

2- �How are you setting up your <dao> and/or <daogrp> links to the digital
documents?

3- �If anyone would be willing to share a basic EAD schema showing their
approach to "born digital" materials.

Thank you for your help,

Jay Burton



--
Joyce Chapman
NCSU Libraries Fellow
Metadata and Cataloging/
Digital Library Initiatives
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