Presentation given by Fergus Fahey, Training Officer for Archives and Records Association (Ireland), on March 9th, 2016, in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. This presentation was part of a training workshop co-hosted by Digital Repository of Ireland and ARA(I), titled 'Introduction to EAD'. This presentation introduces the practical component of the workshop, in which participants created an EAD metadata record for a DRI digital asset.

1. EAD WORKSHOP
DRI 9 March– Fergus Fahey

2. Format of Workshop
• Origins of EAD
• EAD in practice
• Practical example
• Practical work

3. Simple EAD Markup
• <c level="item">
• <did>
• <unittitle>Handwritten letter in form of a diary by Lúghaidh Lamh Fada [Michael Cusack] entitled &quot;Diary of Lúghaidh Lamh
Fada, Creevah, Co.Clare&quot; </unittitle>
•
<unitid>P95/1</unitid>
<unitdate >20-30 June 1902</unitdate>
<physdesc><extent >10 pp</extent></physdesc>
</did>
<scopecontent>
• <p>
• Handwritten letter in form of a diary by Lúghaidh Lamh Fada [Michael Cusack] entitled "Diary of Lúghaidh Lamh Fada,
Creevah, Co.Clare". Giving humorous account of a holiday in County Clare, travelling there from Dublin via Limerick, visiting
cousins and friends, travelling to Ennis, Ruan, Corofin, Lisdoonvarna, Creevah, Kilfenora. Mentioning Hugh Brady, cousins
Patsey, Michael, Lizzie Cusack, and cousin John Culliney. Also mentioning a meeting of "Gaels" in Limerick during night of
travel, and giving impressions from his address to a Mr Hourigan's Gaelic League meeting in Corofin: "Spoke loudly, strongly
and melodiously with the illimitable resources and delightful imagery of a man of two tongues... my voice was as sweet as an
Irish tune and its intonations as graceful as the curl of a reel". Also referring to the "Tuovahera tragedy in 1831" when Cusacks
and neighbours killed "the five unfortunate men who were doing what the peelers did afterwards in Mitchelstown"
• </p>
</scopecontent>
</c>

4. Why EAD was created
• To allow the re-use and sharing of archival
finding aids
“The most appealing reason for standardizing the encoding of
finding aids, however, is that standardization will support the
long-cherished dream of providing…universal, union access to
primary resources…. [Allow users to] locate archival materials at
any time and from any place….Standardized description will also
enable the "virtual" reintegration of collections related by
provenance, but dispersed in different repositories.”
Daniel V. Pitti
D-Lib Magazine, November 1999, Volume 5 Number 11

5. Why EAD was created
• For example the relatively small amount of archival material
relating to James Joyce is distributed around a number of
different archives. According to Pitti’s vision digitised versions
of all these could be accessed from a single finding
aid/interface.
• Technologically this is certainly possible – considered all the
music recording which can be accessed from a single interface
like itunes or Spotify.
• However this hasn’t happened for various reasons – Lack of
investment, lack of will, lack of demand, lack of expertise,
copyright considerations, lack of need.

7. 5 ★ Open Data – Tim Berners Lee

8. 5 ★ Open Data – Tim Berners Lee
★ Make your finding aid available on the Web (whatever format)
under an open license.
★★ Make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of
word doc)
★★★ Make your finding aid available in a non-proprietary open
format (e.g., CSV as well as, Excel)
★★★★ Use URIs to denote items, so that people can point at your
material
★★★★★ Link your data to other data to provide context, make available
as LOD.
Of nearly 10,000 data sets available on data.gov.uk only 4%
could be 5 star

9. 5 ★ Open Data
• Hardcopy Descriptive List
• Ms Word/PDF
• Database
• Calm
• + Calm View
• + Customisation
• ICA-Atom
• Xml Mark-up tool (EAD)
• Zero
• Zero - ★
• Zero – ★ ★ ★
• Zero
• ★
• ★ ★ ★
• ★ ★ ★
• ★ - ★ ★ ★

10. XMLfinding aid. Machine readable. Not pretty but it’s also human readable.

11. XMLtransformed using XSLT

12. Problems with EAD
• Very flexible – A good thing in many ways, bad because a
standard that can be used in lots of ways is in danger of
not being a standard. In reality EAD records are used with
in an institution to put finding aids on line or within formal
groups which mandate greater standardisation for
participation e.g. Online Archive of California (OAC) rather
than widely shared according to the original ‘dream’ and
vision.
• Creating an EAD record may be relatively easy and tools
are available to help. Writing the XSLT and setting us the
system to make the EAD records available is technically
far more challenging.

13. Example EAD to HTML for Web
• Export descriptive list from ICA-ATOM to EAD XML file.
• Use xsl (style sheet) to convert data from the xml file to
html for display in web browser.
• Make changes to xsl file to change the display
• Make changes to the xml file to add or change data
Data Stylesheet Display
Transformation
P95.xml SimpleviewTemplate.xsl

14. Imagine the economies of scale
Data Stylesheet Display
Transformation
P95.xml
SimpleviewTemplate.xsl
P96.xml
P97.xml
P94.xml
P93.xml

15. toc.xsl –Table of Contents

16. col_level.xsl Collection Level

17. Fulllist.xsl Full List

18. Imagine the economies of scale
Data Stylesheets Displays
Transformation
P95.xml
toc.xsl
P96.xml
P97.xml
P94.xml
P93.xml
col_level.xsl
fulllist.xsl

19. Structure of an EAD Document
• XML document made up of elements and attributes
• Tags are usually analogous to an ISAD(G) field e.g.
• 3.2.4 Immediate source of acquisition = <acqinfo>
• <ead> (root)
• <eadheader>
• …… (about the finding aid document rather than archival material)
• </eadheader>
• <arcdesc> (Archival Description wrapper element for the bulk of an EAD document instance)
• ….. Collection level description
<dsc> (information about the hierarchical groupings of the materials being described)
<c level=‘series’>
…… (series level description)
<did> (Most descriptive information tags)
<unittitle>…</unittitle>
</did>
<scopecontent>…</scopecontent>
<c level=‘item’>
……… (item level description)
</c>
</c>
</dsc>
</arcdesc>
</ead>

20. Important but not covered in exercise
Control access tags
• Control access and authority control
• “A wrapper element that designates key access points for
the described materials and enables authority-controlled
searching across finding aids on a computer network.”
• Includes: corpname, famname, genreform, geogname,
persname, subject.
• Much more important in a shared electronic finding aid
that a hard copy one.

21. Common responses to xml/IT in
humanities
• “All you need to do is read the manual”
• True in a sense, but can you drive safely just because
you have read and understood the rules of the road.
• “Just get a computer scientist to do it”
• You may not have access to outside expertise.
• You need to be able to understand technology a bit in
order to draw up requirements for implementation.

22. Remember
• xml must be well formatted
• xml must be validated
• xml can be displayed in a web browser using xslt

23. Useful links Contact
• EAD Tag Library http://www.loc.gov/ead/tglib/index.html
• ICA-Atom https://www.ica-atom.org/
• Archives Hub EAD editor http://archiveshub.ac.uk/eadeditor/
• Archives Portal Europe EAD http://www.apex-
project.eu/index.php/en/outcomes/standards/apeead
• EADiva - http://eadiva.com/
• NUI Galway EAD Finding aids
http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie
• Contact: fergusfaheywt@gmail.com