Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Arranging and cataloguing digital and hybrid archives > EAD templates for a personal archive
EAD templates for a personal archive
To date the use of EAD for cataloguing born-digital archives is not at an advanced stage of development, so a body of practical experience to draw on is lacking. Paradigm therefore began by thinking about the overall arrangement of the project's exemplar archives and how each hierarchical level would map to a component level (c01, c02, etc) in EAD.
Next, the issue of a collection level description for each archive was addressed: conclusions about which EAD elements to include at this level were made as well as recommendations for the content of these elements. There is not scope at this stage to develop cataloguing templates for every record format encountered in Paradigm's testbed archives and the work was therefore limited to tackling three major areas:
- Most of the exemplar archives acquired from politicians working with Paradigm included folders based on subjects, projects, or record types (e.g. minutes, financial material), and these contain a range of file formats: word-processed documents predominate, but there are also image formats, plain text documents, Portable Document Format (PDF) and spreadsheets. Some recommendations on EAD cataloguing at folder and item level for this ‘generic' material are included here.
- Email forms another major component of these archives; as it is unique to the digital environment and poses its own particular challenges, and as the Paradigm Academic Advisory Board identified it as being of particular historical value, the project has suggested some approaches to cataloguing personal email directories - at email directory, folder and item level.
- Paradigm took some snapshots of politicians' websites and weblogs during the 2005 election period. These too were identified as a particularly valuable resource by the Advisory Board, and as they provide various new challenges for archivists, Paradigm also looked at options for cataloguing and providing access to archived websites.
Further considerations
The design process for an EAD profile should give consideration to the search and display mechanisms that the EAD metadata will be expected to support, and to whether the EAD is written purely for a local implementation or should interoperate with network services such as the Archives Hub. These issues are not specifically addressed here, Paradigm being more concerned with how the content of the catalogue is impacted by the addition of born-digital material to the archive.
