A typical finding aid has two or three views of a collection, each of which describes the same body of materials, but at varying levels of detail. Other information in this section includes how the archives received the collection, citation notes and copyright, and storage location. Oftentimes a repository has only a container list for a collection, which may be adequate as a retrieval tool within the confines of the institution, but which may be utterly useless to a researcher in an online environment due to lack of contextual information, such as a biographical sketch or agency history and a summary of the contents. Use Content Standards and Authority Files, 3.4. It is suggested that you also refer to the corresponding element descriptions and examples in the EAD Tag Library as you read this section. This accomplishes two key purposes: to reflect the components' relationship to the whole and to one another, and to assign to each component key pieces of information such as a title, date, physical location, quantity, and others. As you read through these subsequent sections, you are likely to recognize that EAD incorporates much of what you currently do in the area of archival arrangement and description. The different sections of the collection (series and subseries) organize collection content by type of material, format, topic, or some other filing system. As an alternative, you might choose to add controlled access points such as names and subject headings only at those points where such names or subjects appear in the materials being described, at the series, file, or even item level. Furthermore, EAD paves the way for finding aids to become more dynamic in an online environment and offers possibilities for building multirepository union databases of finding aids, conducting searches across multiple finding aids and repositories using one or more elements contained in EAD, and manipulating individual finding aids in new ways as we become more aware of how our researchers approach and use these tools. I like to think of a finding aid as a type of descriptive index or table of contents for a collection. Additional analysis of how markup affects display and retrieval must be done, and greater input and feedback from the user community should be gathered. The level of detail in this section may vary depending on collection scope and individual repository practices. While including these elements does not guarantee the quality of the information entered into each, it does at least ensure that the most important intellectual pieces of a finding aid are available to users. You may decide that you will use standardized data for major access points in encoded finding aids, but not for minor ones, especially if your system is likely to search and display high-level elements first. Identifying and locating primary sources at Purdue University Archives and Special Collections and Beyond, https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/ASCPrimarySources, Primary Sources in Archives & Special Collections. Please note, however, that EAD is more than a structure for accommodating current descriptive practices; it has the potential to improve those practices. Creating a Finding Aid Using Microsoft Word [Tutorial] Video Metadata.

within the higher-level components. Finally, section 3.6 explains how to include metadata or bibliographic information about the finding aid itself, which is essential for publishing your finding aids on the Web. For repositories that are already creating authority-controlled subject and added entries for their MARC records, specifying these same terms in the finding aid does not entail additional work. At the same time that you are creating your component descriptions, you are also perhaps recording the major themes and topics covered in the collection, identifying the types of materials represented, listing people and organizations of interest, and noting the existence of alternative finding aids and access tools. Although for the most part these Guidelines separate the discussion of implementation issues and technical matters from the explanation of the DTD's structure and choice of elements, some overlap is unavoidable. This section provides an overview of the types of materials in the collection. Analyze Existing Finding Aid Structure, 3.3.2. This mid-level description may be represented in a finding aid by narrative descriptions of series or subseries within the whole. Depending on the complexity of the collection and institutional practices, this mid-level description may be unnecessary. During the analysis of the collection, you will likely record information about its current organization and arrangement and may incorporate such information into a processing proposal, which outlines how the various parts will be prepared for research use. Steve DeRose, the group's SGML consultant, looked at a sample finding aid and remarked that there were actually three finding aids in that document: one that describes the collection as a whole, one that describes the large groupings of materials within the collection, and one that describes the files or items within the groupings. There are no MARC police, as the saying goes, and there won't be any EAD police either. Also be sure to ask yourself what function a piece of information serves in the finding aid and whether it would be intelligible if presented to a user in an online environment where an archivist is unavailable to elucidate its meaning. Section 3.5.3 also describes another means by which EAD-encoded finding aids can interact with existing standards, namely through the use of encoding analogs. At the outset of processing the collection, additional information suitable for inclusion in an EAD finding aid is assembled. The beginning of the finding aid includes the name of the archival repository, the title of the archival collection, finding aid creation information, and a date range for the materials. Once the organization has been determined, the focus shifts to issues of arrangement, which relate to how the materials are filed (alphabetical, chronological, etc.)

This section lists the creator of the materials, call numbers, a brief description (abstract) of the collection contents, the size and extent of the collection (in boxes and cubic feet), and language(s) represented in the collection.

We need to reevaluate our assumptions about users' understanding of the information being presented in our finding aids. If they are not clear, then you have gained nothing by encoding and disseminating your finding aids in this fashion and may actually discourage some users. High-Level Model for the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) DTD. Digital Heritage. Guidelines for Creating Finding Aids UsingArchivists’ Toolkit . You may prepare a crib sheet to refer to during processing that identifies the key dates and events in a person's or organization's life. As in MARC, only a handful of elements are required to produce a valid EAD document. The sum total of these descriptions, presented in a hierarchy, constitute "multilevel description." In embracing the concept of multilevel description, EAD captured the spirit and intent of two other important archival standards: ISAD(G) and the Canadian Rules for Archival Description (RAD). Careful reading of these Guidelines and the EAD Tag Library should help encourage responsible and effective use of the EAD element set. Authors: Sustainable Heritage Network. In addition, information is inherited at each level from the higher levels that precede it. How did it come into the repository's control or possession. Bentley Fellowship Finding Aid Team discussions, July 1995. Much of the information considered essential for creating a good EAD finding aid is data that archivists have routinely created during the process of acquiring, organizing, and describing materials. Data elements used to describe the whole unit at the level are available or repeatable at all the levels within the (see Figure 3.4a). 3.3.1. Nevertheless, some of the terms, descriptive practices, and encoding concepts found herein are likely to be new to many readers, and you may find it helpful to read through the entire chapter once for a general understanding of EAD's structure, and then a second time to master some of the finer points of specific elements. Sometimes called “Container list,” or “Box and Folder list.”  This is a box-by-box, folder-by-folder listing of the materials stored in the collection. This initial collection-level description may be viewed by the archivist more as inventory control than an access tool, but gathering and recording the information is an investment in archival description that will reap significant rewards when the data is teased apart and easily mapped to counterpart EAD data categories. The benefit of this approach would be that users' searches could take them directly to relevant materials in a finding aid. When various encoding approaches are possible, the pros and cons of each are discussed. Finding Aid created by Laura Schmidt, 2010 Copyright Corinth Historical Society [ Summary Information : This section lists the creator of the materials in the archive, the size and extent of the collection (in boxes and linear feet), call numbers and storage locations, language(s) represented in the collection, and a brief description (abstract) of the collection contents.] Researchers of archival materials will encounter findings aids when looking for unpublished papers and archival collections. Encoding analogs have been included in EAD to permit the exchange of finding aid data in systems that conform to relevant national and international data structure standards. Structure EAD Documents Consistently, 3.3.3. The next three sections of this chapter comprise an orientation to EAD within the context of archival description: Section 3.5, the core of the chapter, provides a step-by-step description of the process of creating an EAD finding aid, focusing on the relationship between the parts of a finding aid that most archivists find familiar and their corresponding elements and attributes in EAD. These and others issues concerning the use of controlled vocabulary terms are discussed in greater detail in section 3.5.3. At each point in chapter 3 where a technical term or implementation issue is relevant to the discussion of an element or group of elements, a very brief explanation is given on the spot, and a cross reference leads you to a more substantial discussion of the topic elsewhere in the Guidelines. For example, the title of a collection, its span dates, and personal, corporate, and place names appearing in the highest level scope and content note (which reflect the major aspects of the collection) might be controlled, but not those appearing at lower levels in finding aids. This section of the finding aid points the researcher to other items in the archives (or elsewhere) that are closely related to the collection described in the finding aid. This section informs you how the materials have been arranged. Before attempting to embark on an EAD project, it is recommended that you consider the various issues raised in chapter 2 and appendix D and conduct a careful analysis of existing finding aid practices. It is therefore essential that encoded finding aids be clear and intelligible to remote users who will encounter them online. The more information that can be captured at this stage the better, especially if the facts are based on oral sources and are unrecorded elsewhere.