Archives Service Center
DRAFT Guidelines for Encoding Finding Aids at the University of PittsburghBy Cristela Garcia-Spitz & Kate Colligan, Spring 2006
The following draft guidelines provide information about encoding archival finding aids at the University of Pittsburgh, Archive Service Center (ASC) and Special Collections. The information presented in these guidelines is designed to generate uniform practice in the application of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) at the University of Pittsburgh. The intended audience are archivists, interns, and students encoding completed finding aids using EAD.
EAD is the encoding standard for archival finding aids supported by the Society of American Archivists, the Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG), and the Library of Congress. The use of EAD allows access to finding aids in the platform-independent electronic format, eXtensible Markup Language (XML).
These guidelines were revised in 2005-2006 in order to integrate XML and EAD 2002 into the ASC encoding process. The ASC has encoded finding aids in Version 1.0 since 1998 as part of the Historic Pittsburgh Project and is currently transforming existing files into EAD2002 with assistance from the Digital Research Library (DRL).
More information about EAD is available on the Library of Congress EAD Web site. Encoders are encouraged to consult the official EAD Standards Home Page for background information about EAD and to obtain current and authorized versions of the EAD DTD, the Tag Library, and the Application Guidelines.
Thank you for reviewing this draft , please send comments to:
Kate Colligan (katec@pitt.edu)
Archivist, Archives Service Center
University of Pittsburgh
Note: To download, right-click on the link and select “Save Target As...” or "Save Link As..."
ASC EAD Encoding Guidelines (PDF)
ASC EAD Template (XML) (right-click to download)
EAD2002.dtd (right-click
to download)