EAD Assignment, IST628 - Organization and Management of Archival Collections - Spring 2023
Files and useful resources

Useful resources

The following resources are mentioned in the lecture, and will be useful in completing your assignment.

• Examples of finding aids, more than 1000 finding aids for you to look at as examples
• EAD code for the above examples
• Validator, for checking your finding aid
• ISO 639, for three-letter language codes
• ISO 8601, for how the "normal" attribute for dates and times should be formed
• Art and Architecture thesaurus, for terms for the types of material (reports, photographs, minutes, etc)
• Library of Congress Authority files, for names of people and places, for subject headings
• DACS to EAD to MARC crosswalk
• Complete EAD tag library, lists all EAD elements alphabetically
• EADiva, an interactive version of the EAD tag library that lists elements in structural order - a very useful site to explore (it includes information about EAD Version 3, but we're using EAD 2002 for this assignment)

See also this list of handy links for additional resources.

Important notes

DO NOT wait until the night before the assignment is due to begin working on this, in case you have problems with it. If you need help, please email me at mrrothen@syr.edu or call me at 315-443-2081 and I will be happy to work with you.

DO look at lots of examples (links 1 and 2 above) before you start working on your finding aid, and if you encounter problems look at the examples to help you figure out how to fix it.

DO NOT post your completed assignment to Blackboard. When you are done, email your final EAD file to me at mrrothen@syr.edu. Your finding aid will be graded on both encoding (does it validate, have you included required elements, etc.) and content (have you put the correct content into the correct elements).

Downloading files for your EAD description of your collection

READ THIS ==> First, a note about browsers. Different browsers have different capabilities and security settings. Microsoft Edge will NOT work for this assigment. Internet Explorer and Chrome SHOULD work. Firefox may or may not; it depends on what version you have. If you want to use Safari, you may have to adjust a couple of settings; see this article for instructions.

1. Create a new folder on your desktop called "ead_assignment" or similar.
2. Save the following three files to that folder (right-click [Windows] or Apple key [Mac], choose "Save link as" or "Download").
   • NOTE: For some reason, some operating systems may try to change the file extension (the last three letters) of some of the files during the download. In this example you can see I have tried to save the file "eadcbs6-su1.xsl" but the system has changed it to ".xml"
     
     So when you are saving, please look carefully at the "File name" box showing the name the file is being saved as, and make sure that those last three letters match what is listed below. If they do not, change the last three letters in the "File name" box before you click "save," so that it saves it to your computer with the correct name.
   • EAD template: aaa_template.xml
   • EAD stylesheet: eadcbs6-su1_full.xsl
   • EAD stylesheet, printer-friendly version: eadprint-su.xsl
3. To TEST that you have downloaded the files and that they function correctly:
   • Open your web browser and go to this test page (will open in a new window).
   • Next to "XML Source File" click "Browse" and select the file "aaa_template.xml" that you just downloaded.
   • Next to "XSLT style sheet" click "Browse" and select the file "eadcbs6-su1_full.xsl" that you just downloaded above.
   • Click "Run XSLT." The file should look like the image below. If it doesn't, please contact me as soon as possible so we can determine what the problem is.
   • If you want to try a different style sheet, reload the page and select aaa_template.xml as the XML file but for the XSLT style sheet choose the other file you downloaded, eadprint-su.xsl. Then click "Run XSLT" and see what happens!
4. Follow the instructions given in the Assignment Step by Step document to complete the assignment.