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Michael Fox and I have given 11 workshops on the application of EAD (#12 is next week in Toronto), and have some suggestions to make regarding Beta. One of my suggestions is to "unbundle" the <did> element at the component level. While it makes a good deal of sense to group the <did> elements (specifically <repository>, <origination>, <unittitle>, <unitdate>, etc.) at the beginning of the finding aid or highest level of description, at the component level (container list) it simply adds to the tagging overhead. Every time you want to use <unitloc> for a box or folder number and <unittitle> for a folder heading, you have to open a <did> to get to them. If this suggestion is adopted, the <did> elements would be available directly within <c> and <c01>. The <did> element must continue to be available at the component level, so that existing markup is not invalidated. Example: <c01 level="file"><did> <unitloc loctype="container" containertype="box">1</unitloc> <unitloc loctype="container" containertype="folder">1</unitloc> <unittitle>Correspondence, 1935-62</unittitle></did></c01> With the suggested change, the <did> and </did> would disappear. This may seem like a very small change (especially if this markup is completely automated), but I think anything we can do to simplify the markup in the part of a finding aid that is most densely tagged without losing the structure is to our advantage. I'd also like to remind everyone that August 22nd, the deadline for the comment period, is fast approaching! Kris Kiesling Chair, SAA Committee on Archival Information Exchange Chair, SAA CAIE EAD Working Group Head, Department of Manuscripts and Archives Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78713-7219 voice: 512-471-9113 fax: 512.471.9646 [log in to unmask]