[Blacklight-development] Simple EAD indexing and display for Blacklight

[Jason Ronallo]

Hi,
As promised earlier today during the call, I've released some very
simple code for indexing and displaying EAD XML. I wanted to get this
out there just so we'd have some other working EAD code to react to
and possibly collaborate to improve. So please let me know what you
think and/or fork it and send pull requests.

http://github.com/jronallo/blacklight_ext_ead_simple

To install a new Rails application including Blacklight, the EAD
plugin and index sample EAD XML:

rails ./blacklight-app-ead -m
http://github.com/jronallo/blacklight_ext_ead_simple/raw/master/template.rb

Answer yes to everything and start Solr before indexing EAD. (It uses
the Blacklight template from HEAD which allow extra head content.)

This code was just ripped out of our Historical State site [1] so lots
of NCSU specific code remains. Also, the intention in that application
was not to display everything possible in the EAD, but just to give a
the gist and refer the user to the full collection guide if they need
the full collection guide display [2]. Certainly more work could be
done to display more of the information.

Jason

[1] http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/ua023_004 (Notice some
digital objects are displayed inline to the collection guide.)
[2] http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua023_004 (Uses XTF)

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[Jonathan Rochkind]

Can you provide instructions for installing your code as a plugin to an
existing app that already includes BL? Or is your code not yet factored
to allow this?

[Jason Ronallo]

The README gives these instructions:
rake rails:template
LOCATION=http://github.com/jronallo/blacklight_ext_ead_simple/raw/master/template.rb

Let me know if that doesn't work for you.

Jason

[adam wead]

Thanks for this, Jason. I installed a new application and it worked
great. I was able to index the sample EAD and MARC data, as well as
some LC marc records, the ead xml documents that come with the
blacklight app itelf, and an ead doc that I exported from Archivist's
Toolkit.

I have a question about displaying the contents of the ead files. The
README states that it only handles numbered parts of the collection
inventory. I believe the ead docs that I indexed that were not part
of the data set that came with your plugin do not use numbered parts
for their inventory. So, those documents do not display their
inventory, just the scope and content info. Is it possible to change
that? Or should I look into redoing the ead output from AT, for
example, to use numbered parts in the inventory.

Please feel free to point me the way to documentation on EAD formats,
or other relevant info. I'm relatively new to EAD, but I'd be
interested to know the issues behind inventory display in your
blacklight plugin.

thanks!

...adam

On May 3, 5:33 pm, Jason Ronallo <jrona...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> As promised earlier today during the call, I've released some very
> simple code for indexing and displaying EAD XML. I wanted to get this
> out there just so we'd have some other working EAD code to react to
> and possibly collaborate to improve. So please let me know what you
> think and/or fork it and send pull requests.
>
> http://github.com/jronallo/blacklight_ext_ead_simple
>
> To install a new Rails application including Blacklight, the EAD
> plugin and index sample EAD XML:
>

> rails ./blacklight-app-ead -mhttp://github.com/jronallo/blacklight_ext_ead_simple/raw/master/templ...

>
> Answer yes to everything and start Solr before indexing EAD. (It uses
> the Blacklight template from HEAD which allow extra head content.)
>
> This code was just ripped out of our Historical State site [1] so lots
> of NCSU specific code remains. Also, the intention in that application
> was not to display everything possible in the EAD, but just to give a
> the gist and refer the user to the full collection guide if they need
> the full collection guide display [2]. Certainly more work could be
> done to display more of the information.
>
> Jason
>

> [1]http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/ua023_004(Notice some

> digital objects are displayed inline to the collection guide.)

> [2]http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua023_004(Uses XTF)

[adam wead]

Well, I answered my own question...

There's an option in Archivist's Toolkit that enables you to export
numbered component levels. This did the trick.

I'm sure I'll have more questions later, tho...

[Jason Ronallo]

Adam,
I'd like to extend the plugin to handle unnumbered component parts,
since AFAIK they're valid EAD.

Until then I would have suggested you do exactly as you have done,
which is to ask AT to number component parts on export.

Please do let me know if you have other questions, encounter problems
or need features.

Jason