Finding Aids

List of Finding Aids

EAD-XML

In 2015, the Special Collections department of the Albin O. Kuhn Library at UMBC will begin to use Encoded Archival Description (EAD-XML) to create finding aids. Information about this project and the work created will be added to this page as it is finalized.

What is EAD-XML? Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is a standard format of XML that is used to create finding aids. XML is a mark-up langauge that is used for structured data or to make a document machine-readable - this means that a computer can parse out different sections and identify the sections by the XML tags. Why is it important? Creating finding aids using EAD allows archives and libraries to share their files and make them available in shared catalogs like ArchiveGrid. It also means that the finding aids are somewhat uniform, although how the finding aid is displayed to the user can vary quite a lot.

Want to learn more about EAD-XML and/or XML in general?

A resource list is available (opens as a PDF).

Implementation at UMBC

In 2014, UMBC was awarded a grant through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Access to Historical Records program. The project plan for the grant, "Implementation of an EAD compliant work flow at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County," includes standardizing collection level and finding aid data creation, repurposing data across multiple systems (PastPerfect, Aleph, and CONTENTdm), and using multiple standards (MARC, Dublin Core, and EAD3).

• View UMBC's available EAD-XML files
• Grant proposal summary (pdf)
• Project work plan (pdf)
• Description manual (pdf)
• Templates and processing files on Github
• Emily Somach's blog post about her work with EAD-XML, XSLT, and other programming work, March-August 2015
• Poster presentation from the Catholic University of America Symposium, February 12, 2016
• Slide presentation from the Spring 2016 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) session, "EAD in Practice," by Lindsey Loeper
• "Implementing an EAD-XML Compliant Workflow at UMBC" by Lindsey Loeper, Mid-Atlantic Archivist, Fall 2016

Want to learn more or ask questions?

For questions related to the NHPRC grant, the description manual, or EAD, please contact Special Collections Archivist Lindsey Loeper at lindseyloeper@umbc.edu.

For questions related to the use of MARC XML, please contact Catalog Librarian Vicki Sipe at sipe@umbc.edu.