A review of existing practice |
...an eLib supporting study |
EAD is a SGML Document Type Definition (DTD) which can fully present the hierarchical arrangement of archival catalogues [EAD]. It was initiated by the University of California at Berkeley, and its development has been supported by the Society of American Archivists Standards Board. Following beta testing, the EAD Working Group of the Society of American Archivists Committee on Archival Information Exchange, including interested implementers from Britain and Canada, reviewed proposed changes to the DTD. These included consideration of the relationship of EAD to ISAD(G), MARC and the Canadian Rules for Archival Description. A revised DTD is now being tested and is available for comment.
Interest in the opportunity EAD offers to provide effective searching of hierarchies without major restructuring of catalogues is widespread in the UK. There was an early consensus within the JISC NFF Archives Sub Committee that the National Networking Demonstrator Project should include EAD tagged catalogues, and within the National Council on Archives Networking Policy Committee that any national system should accommodate EAD catalogues. Its adoption is also being encouraged by the Research Libraries Group in the UK, and Calm 2000 Plus advertise conformity to EAD. There is, however, considerably less support for EAD among European colleagues, at least some of whom regard it as Anglocentric.
Despite the interest in the UK, there is not yet a consensus that EAD is the preferred way forward for all archive repositories. Some are waiting to review the broader impact of XML, and also the findings of the National Networking Demonstrator Project which will include comments on the respective merits of delivering catalogues prepared in a variety of software and standards to the Web using Z39.50. Concern also focuses on the time taken to encode and the real gains of the end product. There is also the fact that current Web browser technology cannot yet take advantage of text marked up using EAD and that additional software must be downloaded to enable it to be read across the Internet. Although EAD is software independent, university repositories implementing EAD typically invest in Dynaweb and Dynatext software to get the best out of the standard. For its part the Public Record Office, in its plan to get all its finding aids into electronic form by 2001, is proposing to store catalogue data on a large relational database while output for users will be generated in EAD.
Patricia Methven, King's College London