Describing anything that walks:The problem behind the problem of EAD

Journal of Archival Organization

Volumn 1, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 5-28

  Eidson, Matthew Young ^a  

^a United States National Archives and Records Administration   (United States)

Author keywords

Appraisal; Archival descriptive standards; EAD; Encoded Archival Description; Finding aids; Online access; User studies; Users

Indexed keywords

EID: 79957553823     PISSN: 15332748     EISSN: 15332756     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J201v01n04_02     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Richard Z. Szary, “Encoding Finding Aids as a Transferring Technology in Archival Reference Service,” in Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, edited by Wendy Duff and Daniel Pitti (Binghamton, N.Y.: The Haworth Press, Inc., 2001) p. 193.
2. This theme is very prevalent in early progress reports found at the Berkeley Finding Aid Project website published by the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE. Accessed at on April 24, 2002.
3. Anne Van Camp, speaking at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivist, Denver Colorado, August 28-September 3, 2000 session entitled Beyond Markup: Accessing and Using EAD Encoded Materials. (Sound recording provided by Convention Recordings International, St. Petersburg, FL).
4. Kris Kiesling, “EAD as an Archival Descriptive Standard” American Archivist 60 (Summer 1997) p. 438.
5. Wendy M. Duff and Kent M. Haworth, “Advancing Archival Description: A Model for Rationalizing North American Descriptive Standards.” Archives and Manuscripts 25 (November 1997), p. 197.
6. Steven L. Hensen, “NISTF II and EAD: The Evolution of Archival Description,” American Archivist 60 (Summer 1997), pp. 285-286.
7. Wendy M. Duff and Kent M. Haworth, “Advancing Archival Description: A Model for Rationalizing North American Descriptive Standards.” Archives and Manuscripts 25 (November 1997), p. 199.
8. Daniel V. Pitti, “Access to Digital Representations of Archival Materials: The Berkeley Finding Aid Project,” RLG Digital Image Access Project: Proceedings from an RLG Symposium (March 1995, Palo Alto, California). Accessed at on April 22, 2002.
9. Daniel Pitti, “The Berkeley Finding Aid Project: Standards in Navigation,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in New Orleans, 1993, p. 3. Accessed at on April 22, 2002.
10. Daniel Pitti, “Encoded Archival Description: An Introduction and Overview,” D-Lib Magazine 5 (November 1999) p. 2. Accessed at on April 22, 2002.
11. Ann Arbor Accords: Principles and Criteria for an SGML Document Type Definition (DTD) for Finding Aids. Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE (1995). Accessed at on April 24, 2002.
12. David Bearman explores the parent-child relationship found in descriptive data in “Multi-Level Description,” Archives and Museum Informatics (Spring 1994), p. 80. He argues that data inheritance to properties of the class they belong should only be based on function instead of Canadian principles of organizational structure where the fond would be the highest level unit in multi-level description.
13. Wendy Duff and Daniel Pitti, eds., Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, pp. 1-7.
14. Meg Sweet, “The Internationalization of EAD (Encoded Archival Description),” Journal of the Society of Archivists 22 (April 2001), pp. 33-34.
15. Jennifer Marshall in “The Impact of EAD Adoption on Archival Programs: A Pilot Survey of Early Implementers,” Journal of Archival Organization 1(1) 2002, p. 36.
16. Janice Ruth, “Development and Structure of the EAD DTD” in Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, pp. 32-37.
17. In “American Heritage Virtual Archive Project and OAC” Hoyer, Miller and Pollock advocate strongly for the reengineering the traditional finding aid: “As early as the Berkeley Finding Aid Conference in April of 1995, members of the community have been calling for a complete rethinking of what a finding aid ought to be in the world of digital access,” Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, p. 135.
18. Michael Fox, “Stargazing: Locating EAD in the Descriptive Firmament” in Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, pp. 63-64. The models of this particular version of the finding aid were based on ones used by NARA and the Library of Congress. Fox points out that the structure of finding aids in general are more “uncertain and idiosyncratic.”
19. Mary Jo Pugh, “The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivists,” American Archivist, 45 (Winter 1982), pp. 33-44.
20. Elsie T. Freeman, “In the Eye of the Beholder: Archives Administration from the User’s Point of View,” American Archivist, 47 (Spring 1984) pp. 111-123.
21. Robert Bohanan, Supervisory Archivist at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, for the Georgia Archives Institute, 2001 attended by the author.
22. Robert Bohannan, Chief Archivist Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, ARC Team members at NARA and author February 2002. Part of NARA’s strategic plan will be to replace NAIL with the Archival Research Catalog (ARC), building on the fundamentals in the requirements analysis.
23. Paul Conway, “Facts and Frameworks: An Approach to Studying the Users of Archives,” American Archivist 49 (Fall 1986), pp. 393-407 and Partners in Research; Improving Access to the Nation’s Archives (Pittsburgh: Archives and Museum Informatics, 1994).
24. Bruce Dearstyne, “What is Use of Archives? A Challenge for the Profession,” American Archivist 50 (Winter 1987), pp. 79-80.
25. This circumstance can create a contradiction when compared to EAD. Jill Tatem has expressed this by citing Michael Fox’s frustration with the situation from a discussion on the EAD listserv in 1998: “We don’t know what works because we don’t have anything to test because we don’t know what works because we haven’t encoded data because we don’t know what’s needed.” To a certain point this remains true except the fact that there is much more encoded presently then in 1998.
26. Michael Fox, EAD listserv, October 15, 1998 in reference to “Concerns regarding number of hits.”
27. Jill Tatem, “EAD: Obstacles to Implementation, Opportunities for Understanding,” Archival Issues 23 (1998), p. 169.
28. Susan Malbin, “The Reference Interview in Archival Literature,” College and Research Libraries 58 (January 1997), p. 112.
29. Progress reports, Berkeley Finding Aid Project website.
30. Avra Michelson, “Description and Reference in the Age of Automation,” American Archivist 50 (Spring 1987), pp. 200-201.
31. Kathleen Feeney, “Retrieval of Archival Finding Aids Using World-Wide-Web Search Engines,” American Archivist 62 (Fall 1999), pp. 208-209. Margaret Headstrom and Elizabeth Yakel are currently researching the usefulness of EAD and finding aids as a tool for users to access archival materials. Their initial findings do not shed favorable light on archivist’s conceptions of their own descriptive products.
32. Online versions of these EAD encoded finding aids and search system used in the pilot study can be found at the Historic Pittsburgh website through the Digital Research Library of Pittsburgh: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/pittsburgh/.
33. Elizabeth Yakel, “Access Tools as Boundary Object.” Presentation at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivist, Denver Colorado, August 28-September 3, 2000. Session entitled Beyond Markup: Accessing and Using EAD Encoded Materials. (Sound recording provided by Convention Recordings International, St. Petersburg, FL.) Yakel’s initial work at the University of Pittsburgh is being extended to reflect present research being conducted at the University of Michigan surrounding the notion of archival intelligence and user interaction with archives.
34. Helen R. Tibbo and Lokman I. Meho, “Finding Aids on the World Wide Web,” American Archivist 64 (Spring 2001), pp. 63, 75-77. There is also evidence which concludes that even archival databases have been designed with the flaw of not understanding who potential users are, what they are looking for and which navigational features best support their research.
35. Andrea Rosenbusch, “Are Our Users Being Served? A Report on Online Archival Databases,” Archives and Manuscripts 29 (May 2001), pp. 44-61.
36. Kathleen Feeney, “Retrieval of Archival Finding Aids,” p. 223.
37. William Landis, “Nuts and Bolts: Implementing Descriptive Standards to Enable Virtual Collections” Journal of Archival Organization, 1(1) 2002, pp. 82-83.
38. Jill Tatem, Presentation at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivist, Washington D.C., August 31, 2001. Session entitled “To EAD or not to EAD: Is that really the Question?”
39. Mary Jo Pugh, “Illusion of Omniscience,” pp. 33-44.
40. William Landis, “Nuts and Bolts” p. 83.
41. William L. Joyce, “Archivists and Research Use,” American Archivist 47 (Spring 1984), pp. 124-133.
42. Philip C Brooks, Research in Archives: The Use of Unpublished Primary Sources (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 82-92.
43. Wendy Duff and Penka Stoyanova, “Transforming the Crazy Quilt: Archival Displays from a User’s Point of View,” presentation at Society of American Archivists Meeting.
44. Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, “Popularizing the Finding Aid, Exploiting EAD to Enhance Online Discovery and Retrieval in Archival Information System by Diverse User Groups,” in Encoded Archival Description on the Internet, pp. 199-221.
45. Richard Cox has suggested in a number of class lectures surrounding appraisal that it will be the appraisal decisions about records and not the records themselves that will be studied in the future.
46. Steven Hensen, “Archival Cataloging and the Internet: Implication and Impact of EAD,” in EAD and the Internet, p. 80.
47. Liv Mykland as quoted by Kent Haworth, “Archival Description: Content and Context in search of Structure,” in EAD and the Internet, p. 8.
48. Kent Haworth, “Archival Description: Content and Context in search of Structure,” in EAD and the Internet, p. 11.
49. Richard C. Berner, Archival Theory and Practice in the United States: A Historical Analysis (University of Washington Press, Seattle 1983) p. 5. Among other ad-vocates calling appraisal the most important function in archives are Richard Cox, Terry Cook and earlier by Maynard Brichford.
50. Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, “Enduring Paradigm, New Opportunities: The Value of the Archival Perspective in the Digital Environment,” Keynote address to Society of California Archivists, April 27, 2001.
51. William Landis, “Nuts and Bolts” p. 84.
52. Terry Cook, “Viewing the World Upside Down: Reflections on the Theoretical Underpinnings of Archival Public Programming” Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-1991), pp. 126-127.
53. Some interpretative history digital archives initiatives attempt, rather successfully, to pull a user through “vistas” of related information grounded in these concepts. One such initiative, the Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania Labor Legacy website, has suffered from support redirection to the finding aid encoding efforts at the University of Pittsburgh’s Archives Service Center during its design and implementation. It can be accessed at http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/.
54. Wendy Duff, “Will Metadata Replace Archival Description: A Commentary,” Archivaria 39 (1995), pp. 33-38.
55. Jean-Stephan Piche, “Doing What’s Possible with What We’ve Got: Using the World Wide Web to Integrate Archival Functions,” American Archivist 61 (Spring 1998), p. 106.
56. Terry Cook, “Viewing the World Upside Down: Reflections on the Theoretical Underpinnings of Archival Public Programming” Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-1991), pp. 126-127.
57. Elizabeth J. Shaw, commenting on the discussion of re-engineering finding aids access in the archives of the Encoded Archival Description Listserv, October 29, 2002. For a good review of Shaw’s thoughts on EAD see “Rethinking EAD: Balancing Flexibility and Interoperability,” New Review of Information Networking, vol. 7 (2001), pp. 117-132.
58. Jill Tatem, “EAD: Obstacles to Implementation,” p. 158. The development of XML and related style sheets is the next logical step for EAD. Fundamentally, it is being picked up by popular Internet browsers creating a temporary solution to this, although it has not been implemented at any level to compete with HTML.
59. Meg Sweet et al., “Public Records Office Hierarchical Internet Catalogue (PROCAT)” in EAD and the Internet, p. 80.
60. Dorothy Johnston, “From Typescript Finding Aids to EAD (Encoded Archival Description): A University Case Study,” Journal of the Society of Archivists, 22 (2001), p. 43.
61. A concept described further by Paul Conway in Preservation in the Digital World (Commission on Preservation and Access, March 1996) p.16. Accessed at on January 31, 2002.
62. Kristi Kiesling, “Metadata, Metadata, Everywhere-But Where is the Hook?” OCLC Systems and Services 17 (2001) p. 86.
63. Michael Fox, “Stargazing” in EAD and the Internet, p. 68.
64. Timothy P. Hoyer, Steven Miller and Alvin Pollock, “American Heritage Virtual Archive Project and the Online Archive of California,” in EAD and the Internet, p. 115.
65. Michael Fox, “Stargazing” in EAD and the Internet, p. 72.
66. Maria Bonn, “Improving Information Retrieval Within and Across EAD Systems.” Presentation at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivist, Denver Colorado, August 28-September 3, 2000. Session entitled Beyond Markup: Accessing and Using EAD Encoded Materials. (Sound recording provided by Convention Recordings International, St. Petersburg, FL.)
67. David Ruddy of Cornell University Library speaking at Presentation at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivist. The DFAS Final Report and White Paper on Common Access Points can be found at http://www. umdl.umich.edu/dfas/.
68. Steven Hensen, “Archival Cataloging and the Internet,” pp. 80-82.
69. Daniel Pitti, “Encoded Archival Description: The Development of an Encoding Standard for Archival Finding Aids,” in Encoded Archival Description: Context, Theory, and Case Studies. Edited by Jackie M. Dooley (Society of American Archivists: Chicago, 1998) p. 22.