Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

Flashcards about Encoded Archival Description (EAD).

What does EAD stand for?

Encoded Archival Description

According to the sources, EAD is a form of which markup language?

XML (Extensible Markup Language)

Which standard, mentioned alongside EAD, dictates the content that belongs in archival description?

DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard)

What is a primary benefit of making finding aids machine-readable through EAD encoding?

It allows finding aids to be displayed dynamically on the internet and improves discoverability.

In the nesting structure of EAD's XML, how is the closing of tags typically described?

The last tag opened is the first one closed.

Which element is the required root element of an EAD instance?

 <ead>

The <control> element in an EAD instance is used to record what type of information?

Bibliographic and administrative information about the EAD instance (the finding aid).

Which element group contains core descriptive identifying information for the materials, such as the unit title, date, and physical description, and is found within both <archdesc> and component elements (<c>, <c01>, etc.)?

 <did>

The <dsc> element is primarily used to describe what part of the archival collection?

The subordinate components and inventory elements (series, files, items).

In EAD3, access point elements like <persname>, <corpname>, and <subject> were modified and must now contain one or more child elements to represent the components of a name or term. What is the name of this required child element?

<part>

When encoding access points like <genreform> within <controlaccess>, what attribute is used to indicate the source of the term, such as a specific thesaurus or vocabulary list?

@source

The history of changes or revisions made to the EAD instance itself is recorded within which element?

<maintenancehistory>

Which element in EAD is used to provide an unstructured statement describing the physical characteristics of the materials, such as "4 volumes and 1 folder"?

 <physdesc>

EAD3 introduced new structured elements for dates and physical descriptions to enable consistent machine processing. What is the name of the structured element for temporal description (dates)?

<unitdatestructured>

A key benefit of using EAD with a stylesheet for online display is that it allows you to easily change the look and feel of the finding aid display without having to modify the underlying EAD code.

True

The <relations> element, added in EAD3 and described as experimental, is used to describe the relationship between the archival materials and what?

Related external entities like persons, corporate bodies, resources, or functions.

To support multilingual description, EAD3 added attributes to non-empty elements that allow you to explicitly state the language and script used. What are these attributes?

@lang and @script.

Within a <maintenanceevent>, which required child element uses a controlled list of values (human, machine, unknown) to indicate the type of agent responsible for the event?

<agenttype>

Encoding finding aids is not the only way to describe collections. If a repository chooses not to encode in EAD but writes finding aids in a text editor like Microsoft Word, they can still be compliant with which standard?

DACS

According to the EAD3 Tag Library, which pair of elements is recommended to provide a globally unique identifier for the EAD instance (the finding aid document)?

<recordid> and <agencycode>