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Re: Egad, its EADS!!!!--grumping back



"Scott, Kim A." <kascott@MONTANA.EDU> wrote:

> It would be fine thing, in my humble opinion, if all manuscript
collections
> in this country had AT LEAST a catalog record in some union list such as
> NUCMC before we all get pressed into some sort of finding aid matrix....

> Once we have the catlog records in place, knock yourself out with the
> finding aid.

I couldn't disagree more.  The finding aid is the heart of archival
practice.  A simple catalog entry for an entire collection is darned near
useless, especially if the collection has any depth or breadth of content.
The whole point of archival processing is to create an accessible collection
of materials.   If it cannot be accessed, it's just so much trash.

Given that, a standard way of constructing finding aids is not a bad
idea--after all, patrons who use one finding aid would be greatly
convenienced if they did not have to learn another system with each new
research facility.  Moreover, a uniformity in finding aid presentation
allows software manipulators and database handlers to be devised that can
handle large numbers of finding aids from disparate places.  The Online
Archives of California, for instance, provides a unified search-base for
archival collection from throughout that state [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/].
Since a standard is clearly called for, why not EAD?

While I agree that EAD has some serious difficulties, it has several major
advantages:

   It is SGML based, making it relatively user friendly.
   For the same reason, it is web-friendly.
   It can be created from a variety of platforms and applications.
   It does not define field lengths, allowing full freedom of description
(unlike Access or other databases)
   It does not require procrustean top-down definition, but allows encoding
on the fly for subseries or even items that have special descriptive
requirements.

Yes, I know there are some disadvantages, too.  But like they say about
democracy and marriage, until somebody thinks of something better....

John Howard Fowler
Consulting Archivist
3221 W. 177th St.
Torrance CA 90504-4003
310-327-5848
az248@lafn.org

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