Encoded Archival Description on the Internet

Citation

Ferguson, S. (2003), "Encoded Archival Description on the Internet", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 183-184. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2003.52.4.183.5

Encoded Archival Description Document Type Definition (or EAD DTD) dates from a project initiated by the University of California (Berkeley) Library in 1993, involving specialists from several other institutions (principal investigator, Daniel Pitti). DTDs are sets of rules that define the elements that make up a document and encode them in such a way that text within the document can be retrieved, displayed and exchanged across different platforms. The best known example is HTML (Hyper‐Text Markup Language). EAD is a DTD developed specifically to designate the intellectual and physical elements of archival finding aids. The papers in this collection cover what EAD is, what it is meant to achieve, its history, where it fits into the world of descriptive standards, how it has been applied in archives and other environments, and what the implications may be for archival reference services. The primary market for this book is undoubtedly the archives community, but for non‐archivists there is some good introductory material on archives principles, especially in the opening essay by Kent Haworth. It is through understanding the complexity of archival description – as compared, for example, with a library catalogue record – that one appreciates the point made by several contributors about the inadequacy of other standards as means of searching archival finding aids online and disseminating them via the Internet to distant users.

Applications covered include consortial approaches to the Online Archive of California or OAC (discussed in two of the papers) and the American Heritage Virtual Archive Project, and the various initiatives of the Research Libraries Group (RLG) to bring primary research resources to the desktop. In the only non‐American contribution, Meg Sweet and others outline some of the practical issues associated with two projects at the Public Record Office in England, an especially large EAD application. Another paper discusses the benefits, and challenges, of applying EAD in museums. The final two essays take a more theoretical approach than the earlier papers: one examines the potential impact of EAD on archival reference service, and the other discusses the role of finding aids and extends Marcia Bates’s “browsing and berrypicking” model for online searching into a set of strategies and design features aimed at enhancing information retrieval in EAD‐based archival information systems.

There is any amount of information and comment on the Internet about EAD (see, for example, lcweb.loc.gov/ead/), but there is considerable value in a collection of essays by leading theoreticians and practitioners. The time factor is inevitably a problem, especially with “how‐we‐did‐it” accounts of applications. One, for example, discusses a specific product used to publish finding aids on the Web – other commercial products now available are mentioned, but not named. There is also considerable repetition throughout the collection. The book is indexed, but the publishers would do well to consider a glossary for such an acronym‐laden topic. For archivists this should be compulsory reading, but for other information professionals, academics and students of information retrieval there is also much of interest.