On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Leslie A. Morris wrote:
> Our reason for choosing to use unnumbered <c>s was simple: we are
> attempting to present all Harvard finding aids in a uniform way, and found
> that a <c03> in one finding aid might be a series, and in another a <c03>
> might be a sub-series.
I would be interested to hear more about how the choice of nested <c>s
vs. nested <c0x>s plays out in displays. I assume that the implicit
assumption in this concern is display in Panorama?
I've been pondering this question about a particular level of <c0x> being
a series in one f.a. and a sub-series in another. This is certainly the
case with the finding aids at the Bentley. I decided, at least while
it's all just a theoretical question, that there are a limited number of
combinations available and that one could accommodate them all with
different Panorama stylesheet files, one for each possible combination.
This might prove an impracticality in the long run?
It seems to me though that you don't really get around this by using <c>s
instead of <c0x>s, since regardless of what label you use, a particular
item would be nested at a different location in different finding aids
depending on whether or not the fonds in question is divided into only
series or into series/subseries. I haven't actually experimented with this,
but wouldn't this mess up the use of a single Panorama stylesheet file
for all of Harvard's finding aids anyway?
Also, taking this further and exposing up front my bias that relying on
Panorama as the sole means of accessing a repository's EAD files puts an
unnecessary burden on the end user, I wonder if providing access to EAD
files using a search engine like OpenText and relying on on-the-fly SGML
-> HTML conversion for display would or would not have an effect on the
consideration expressed in Leslie Morris' message.
Sorry to go on and on about this. I wish I had more time to explore these
questions on my own, but I'm also glad that this list provides a place to
hear about other people's experiences. I think these questions are
critical to archival implementation of EAD and potentially other DTDs.
The whole notion of basing tagging decisions on display factors seems
wrong-headed to me and I would hate to see the capabilities of one
marginally available software package (apologies to the folks at Panorama;
I'm surrounded by Macs and bitter that the promised viable Mac version of
Panorama Pro seems to remain a mirage ;-) drive our collective
implementation of something with such long-term potential as EAD.
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