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National Library of Medicine online manuscript finding aids



This notice is being distributed to several listserves. Please forgive multiple postings.

The National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division announces its plunge into the EAD pool.

Encoded Archival Description (EAD), an SGML document type definition, is a recently developed standard for presenting archival finding aids on the World Wide Web. The standard is jointly maintained by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress and by the Society of American Archivists.

For the initial public release, thirteen of the Archives and Modern Manuscripts Program's 104 finding aids were selected for web publication. All 104 finding aids have been encoded in SGML according to the EAD Document Type Definition and will then be exported to HTML for web publication.

The finding aids currently available include collections of John Shaw Billings, C. Everett Koop, James A. Shannon, the National League for Nursing, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation Awards, the American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics, the William and Wilkins copyright suit against NLM, and "Profiles in Science" collections of Nobel Laureates Christian Anfinsen, Julius Axelrod, Oswald T Avery, and Martin Rodbell.

Within the next few weeks, the remaining manuscript collection finding aids will be added to the site, in weekly installments.

John Rees, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts, was the principal on this project. The NLM's Lister Hill Center for Biomedical Communications provided additional assistance. The Electronic Scriptorium of Leesburg, VA, performed the retrospective conversion. Paul Theerman, Head of Non-Books Collections, participated in the determination of the subset of EAD that we decided to use in HMD. James Labosier, Manuscripts Technician, will assist with final HTML editing of the remaining finding aids. Special thanks goes to Michael Fox of the Minnesota Historical Society for his help with adapting one of the EAD Cookbook's XSL stylesheets for HMD's use.

Access to the finding aids is through the HMD home page under "General Information" then "Manuscript Collections Sorted by Type" and then "Manuscript Collections Sorted by Call Number." If an electronic finding aid exists, it will be noted in the right-most column. An alphabetical list of available finding aids also exists.

HMD Home Page:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/hmd.html

Direct access:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/msc.html 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/alpha.html

Future access points will include a hot-link from the MARC record in the NLM's online catalog LocatorPlus.

For any technical questions about HMD's local conversion or encoding processes, feel free to call or e-mail John Rees directly.

John P. Rees
Assistant Curator, Modern Manuscripts
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
301-496-8953 Office
301-402-7034 Fax
reesj@mail.nlm.nih.gov

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