Following the seminar held two years ago in Paris on the application of the EAD DTD for cultural heritage purposes in archives and in libraries, the Directorate of the Archives of France organised a European Conference on 7-8 October 2004 on data-processing software for encoding finding aids for archives and authority data into XML (Extensible Markup Language). The first European Conference on the subject took place at the Public Record Office in Kew in October 1999.

EAD, the first public version of which (1998) was revised in September 2002, is a document type definition founded on the same principle of multilevel description as the General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G). EAD was influenced by TEI (the Text Encoding Initiative) and contains elements that are equivalent to MARC fields (an EAD inventory aid may be linked with a MARC note, and conversely, an EAD notice may be converted into MARC). EAD is now well established in North America and in the rest of the world, and it has attained technical stability while continuing to keep abreast of technological advances.

Since 2001 another DTD, EAC (Encoded Archival Context), has been developed simultaneously. Perfectly compatible with the International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families ISAAR(CPF), and complementary to the UNIMARC/Authorities format, EAC combines bibliographic authority records and archival authority records, which give information both about the creator and the context of creation of archival material.

The top international, European and French specialists took part in this conference that was very sucessful : more than 280 participants, archivists, librarians, museum curators and technical consultants from 17 countries attended. The three plenary sessions about EAD dealt successively with requirements for the DTD’s implementation (standardisation of archival description, training), creation of EAD/XML inventories and catalogs, and finally editing and publishing tools. The last half-day concerned the DTD EAC : origins, main characteristics, relationships with ISAAR(CPF) and examples of implementation. Demonstration stands were a complement of the plenary sessions.

We can draw many conclusions from the different presentations.

In the case of retrospective conversion, institutions turning to an external provider cannot avoid teaching ISAD(G) and EAD to their staff and creating a working group that must provide specifications for data converters. Such projects will have impact on future cataloguing (Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques). In spite of the difficulties (variety of the record groups and collections, very different description practices), retrospective conversion enables us to participate in many cooperative projects founded on the use of EAD (Bodleian Library). Using EAD enables us to structure the existing descriptions (that may be very different and that may have various levels of description) and to produce current catalogues, that will be available on the web as soon as they are developed (Bibliothèque nationale de France).

From the training round-table, we discussed the variety of the institutions where EAD is taught and the diversity of the educational programmes. Learning new technologies is less problematic than standardising the descriptive practices.

Very different solutions have been adopted for producing EAD documents : direct capture of data with XML editors or tools for editing online finding aids (MidosaXML software developed by the archives school in Marburg) or automatic conversions (database BASYS-FOX in the Bundesarchiv and database for building permits of the Mairie de Paris). Sometimes, the exports require adjustments (project Metrica Regni of the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, Poland). Original solutions have been adopted : EAD adaptations (use, in Switzerland, of a simplified DTD, or use by many territorial French Archives of the software Arkheia and its module “Aide au classement”), or implementation of specific DTD (Encoded Archival Guide for description of the archives centres, as part of an Electronic Guide to 42000 Spanish and Ibero-American Archives). Moreover, validating tools have recently been developed in order to improve the quality of EAD documents.

Developing tools for the consultation of EAD documents is mandatory in the process of production and publication of encoded finding aids. Freeware and proprietary software coexist : proprietary applications such as ActionArchives used by the Archives départementales de la Côte d’Or, and freeware such as Pleade and Navimages and the implementation of tools enabling extraction of metadata from EAD documents into Dublin Core format, in order to facilitate integration of EAD documents into larger databases. The three examples presented for UK (Access to Archives governed by The National Archives, ArchivesHub which provides online access to collection-level description of archives held in UK universities and colleges, and NAHSTE, Navigational Aids to the History of Science, the Technology and the Environment) have pointed that, while general aims are similar, the projects using EAD in different ways reflect the different institutional environments as well as different needs of contributing repositories and users.

Among the EAD evolutions we may expect, we should note its change into an XML schema. EAD has been developed for enabling structuration of textual documents. EAD is less adapted to independent descriptions. The use of an XML schema is more compliant with an approach focused on the document and more favourable to current cataloguing of items. One of the main objectives of the XML schema will be EAD interoperability with other schemas, that means using other schemas inside EAD and using EAD inside other schemas.

The description of the context in which the records and other primary sources are created is fundamental. Describing records implies providing information on their custodial history, their arrangement or events about their creation and their use. In France, the translation of the Tag Library by the AFNOR working group on “authority records” is the first step for EAC application.

SIASFI, the on-line Guide to the State Archives of Florence, is an interesting example of ISAAR(CPF) implementation (EAC will be used in a second step): the model of separate and linked description of archival materials, of their creators and of the historical context of their creation improves search and retrieval functionalities and the changes and revisions of the Guide.

The European LEAF project has the purpose of structuring in XML the authority files that are provided by different partners. At the beginning, the project had to encode authority records for persons and corporate bodies. Because of the complexity of authority records for corporate bodies, during the project phase, the scope was limited to authority records for persons. LEAF adopted EAC as a federative format for encoding the many and various authority records. LEAF tests made EAC changes possible, with the remarks and comments of different partners.

In France, EAD and EAC software integration will enable us to adopt these standards. Tools for direct capture of data such as XML editors are not yet easy to use. This may stand in the way of EAD development in the French archives network. Moreover, producing EAD documents with XML editors requires the implementation of a platform for managing XML documents and avoiding problems of versions, access, saving and control of EAD documents. Making members of an archival staff, who may have been trained in various ways, aware of standardization of archival description may be another difficulty.

That is the reason the Directorate of Archives of France encourages integration by existing tools (archival software) of the standards (but perhaps, all the potentialities of EAD won’t be integrated in these tools). The Archives of France are studying the functionalities provided by this software for archival description, in comparison with ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF) and EAD.

In France, original solutions, freeware or proprietary, are being developed for publishing encoded documents on the web. It would be naïve to think that there is only one unique tool for doing everything, from the creation of the finding aid to its publication on the web, without developing it yourself at great expense. On the contrary, we should aim for the compatibility of the different tools for producing and editing finding aids. A finding aid cannot be considered as definitive.

At least, beyond the description of the documents, French archivists have begun to consider the integration of digital objects inside XML documents. Conversion into EAD of the database for the building permits of the Mairie de Paris is an original experience, because it will aim to use the METS schema as part of digitisation of administrative functions (legal control). METS is used to encode descriptive, administrative and structural metadata of digital objects and it includes EAD.

The complete papers of the European conference will be published in the Journal of Archival Organization, an American periodical specialized in electronic tools concerning archival description (first half-year 2005).

Rapporteur:

Claire Sibille, Direction des Archives de France

claire.sibille [at] culture [dot] gouv [dot] fr

For more information: www.ica.org/eurbica