Content Creation & Dissemination Team EAD Database WG, EAD3 Group Implementing EAD3 in the CCD Program: Final Report and Recommendations 2016 March 3

Transcription

1 Content Creation & Dissemination Team EAD Database WG, EAD3 Group Implementing EAD3 in the CCD Program: Final Report and Recommendations 2016 March 3 Group members: Rose Krause, Eastern Washington University (chair) Doug Lambeth, Washington State University Julie Carmen, Central Washington University Jodi Allison Bunnell, Alliance Executive Summary and Recommendations The group has thoroughly examined the changes in, advantages of, and possible impacts from the implementation of EAD3 at the Alliance. The adoption of EAD3 will require a mix of minor and substantial infrastructure changes to the supporting infrastructure and interface of Archives West. There are also unclear advantages of implementation at this time. For that reason, this group recommends that the Alliance consider postponing implementation of EAD3 until after the ArchivesSpace implementation in FY17 18 to avoid fee increases to the A&M Service annual fees. The Alliance should consider looking for a different infrastructure at that time, in concert with the implementation of EAD3. In the meantime, we suggest that the Alliance consider working with other EAD groups on best practices, if possible. There is mutual interest in collaboration from other Western consortia (including the Utah Academic Library Consortium); a collaborative approach could be successful if all parties are equally committed to substantial participation. The CCD will also need to continue tracking on national level EAD3 study groups, one of which is looking at national level EAD standards. Overview of Changes in EAD3 A. <eadheader> The <eadheader> contains major changes that impact the Archives West infrastructure. Among the most substantial changes are: 1. The deprecation of <eadid> and movement of its components into existing and new elements, such as <maintenanceagency>, <recordid>, <otherrecordid>. This change is significant because it seems to be modeled on a one institution/one EAD repository model, whereas Archives West is a multi institution/one EAD repository model. a. There are significant implications for these changes on the repository registry as this system relies on <eadid mainagencycode= > to connect the EAD instance to the correct institution s registry information; in EAD3, the mainagencycode has become as child element of <maintenaceagency>. Minor changes of note are:

2 1. The new element <representation> provides a way to link to transformed and deliverable versions of an EAD instance, such as HTML or PDF versions. This new element could be used to identify the printable PDF version of the EAD that Archives West currently generates. 2. The grouping of elements used to record creation, revision, and other significant changes in an EAD instance under the wrapper element <maintenancehistory>. The changes to existing EADs seems automatable. 3. <languagedeclaration> is a new element that groups together individual child elements for <language> and <script> and provides a separate <descriptivenote> for the human readable text string that describes the languages of the finding aid. The EAD2002 to EAD3 conversion script does not automatically generate the script name, but this could probably be automatically populated by a tweak to the conversion script. 4. Most other changes are easily converted using the EAD2002 to EAD3 conversion script. B. <archdesc> Major changes: 1. Two major changes in structured data elements: a. <unitdate> to <unitdatestructured> b. <physdesc> to <physdescstructured> c. These new elements allow for more granularity in coding data, which could benefit the user interface by allowing for more faceting of results on dates and material types. d. A significant issue with <physdesc> is that the <extent> element is no longer available as a child element, which then turns the text from the <extent> elements into a jumble of sentences within <physdesc>. The consequences of this change emphasize the benefit of moving to <physdescstructured> if we want to retain the granular statements already available in existing <extent> elements. Minor changes: 1. Adding <part> child elements to <name>, <corpname>, <famname>, <persname>, etc. elements. 2. A change in the way the <langmaterial> element is structured is similar to the changes for <languagedeclaration> in the <eadheader> (now <control>). This change seems to be fairly well handled by the EAD2002 to EAD3 conversion script, although there will need to be changes to the Archives West stylesheet to accommodate changes to display. 3. Additions to and movement of elements and attributes seems to be handled well by the EAD2002 to EAD3 conversion script. 4. The collection level approach already used for digital objects converts acceptably using the EAD2002 to EAD conversion script. 5. The <relations> element has been added as an experimental element that may or may not continue into future versions of EAD. The purpose of the element is to group[] one or more <relation> elements, which identify external entities and characterize the nature

3 of their relationships to the materials being described. The working group does not support implementation of this element because of its experimental status. We can implement the element If it becomes an official element in a later version of EAD. C. <dsc> The changes to the <dsc> are minor and mirror many changes required in other areas, such as the addition of <part> child elements to name elements and type= attributes replaced by localtype= attributes. Complex and large collection finding aids convert fine in the <dsc> using the EAD2002 to EAD3 conversion script. Implications for Archives West Infrastructure The Archives West infrastructure is currently used to manage 29,000 EAD documents from thirty eight institutions in seven states. The infrastructure was built in , just after EAD 2002 was created and released, and assumes use of either EAD 2002 DTD or (in the case of the Utah contributors) EAD 2002 schema. The Alliance and its contributing institutions invested $30,000 in a substantial redesign of user interface in that launched on July 1, Although working groups that contributed to that redesign considered making changes to the underlying infrastructure (considering, for instance, whether to switch to another supporting product like XTF) while scoping the redesign, they ultimately recommended to first redesign the user facing interface, then plan for a possible infrastructure change 1 2 years later. Factors influencing that recommendation included the costs for migration and the certainty that EAD3 would affect our choices and directions. From this group s examination of EAD3, it appears that implementing EAD3 would have some fairly profound impacts on the management infrastructure. The change from <eadheader> to <control>, for instance, and the deprecation of <eadid> would mean substantial changes in our document management practices. At present, document management in Archives West is based on three things: The filenames under which documents are submitted; The durable identifiers assigned to each document (Archival Resource Keys, or ARKs) and recorded in <eadheader> <eadid>; The repository identifiers recorded in <eadheader><eadid>. For the first, the OCLC code for each institution means that as each document is submitted, it is kept in a directory associated with that institution. This longstanding practice can continue unabated and is not affected by EAD3. The identifiers in the <eadheader> are more problematic. The ARKs are recorded on submission to Archives West in a database that associates each one with a filename. That database in turn plays a role in creating the sitemaps that are critical for effective search engine harvest. EAD3 moves this to a different element. Likewise, the country and repository identifiers

4 recorded in <eadid> move to different element, <maintenanceagency>; the countrycode remains an attribute while the agency code becomes the content of the element <agencycode>. These repository identifiers are a critical element of the repository registry, which takes current repository contact information (see ) and populates each finding aid with it. Original: <eadid countrycode="us" encodinganalog="identifier" mainagencycode="waps" url=" identifier="80444/xv57799">pc 35</eadid> After conversion to EAD3: <otherrecordid localtype="identifier">80444/xv57799</otherrecordid><maintenanceagency countrycode="us"> <agencycode>waps</agencycode> While it will be possible to work with these changes, they will require skilled programming and a reworking of two critical aspects of the infrastructure. This will, in turn, require resources. Additionally, one of the high level changes noted in EAD3 is increasing the possible granularity in physical description and dates. At present, both of those elements are so unstructured that making use of them for administrative purposes (e.g. how many linear feet of materials are represented in Archives West?) or for end users (e.g. facet by size of collection) is not feasible. Additionally, date normalization in <unitdate> varies quite a big across the Archives West documents and made it impossible to implement date faceting during the 2015 redesign of Archives West. We have no other current or emerging examples of institutions or consortia that are making use of this granularity, or who plan to. Without compelling use cases, embarking on the metadata cleanup and infrastructure modification is not very desirable. In FY17 18, the CCD Team has proposed a two year implementation of ArchivesSpace to replace Archivist s Toolkit. In order to avoid steep fee increases, the program has kept the resources devoted to Archives West at a moderate level (that still accounts for needed support and maintenance) and directed all possible resources to that implementation. Thus, it would be most cost effective to consider EAD3 implementation in FY19, with the option to consider it earlier if participating institutions feel that use cases justify the costs. Attachment: EAD BPGs to EAD3 spreadsheet Other References:

5 EAD Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists (home of the EAD3 FAQ and the EAD3 Study Groups): archival description ead roundtable Journal of Western Archives: Review of EAD3 Tag Library: