Feedback about EAD export from AtoM

[Jenny Mitcham]

Hello,

We are getting close to releasing our version of AtoM here at the University of York and we are now exploring how we can make this data available to data aggregators (such as the Archives Hub). We've sent them a copy of some of the EAD exported from AtoM and they a few comments about it which we wanted to run by you to see if you had solutions to any of these - many of these are things that we can probably find workarounds for, but I thought it would be useful to pass on the feedback and pick up any suggestions:

1) They have fed back to us that they would expect to see the main identifier/archival reference in the <eadid> element - so instead of <eadid identifier="http://symfony/symfony/retreat-archive”.... they would like to see <eadid identifier="RET”...  

2) The <extent> and <scopecontent> elements has line breaks in as do some others. Would paragraphs <p> work better?

3) The <repository> element includes our address as well as the repository name - really we would just want our name in here.

Let me have your thoughts!

Thanks,

Jen

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Jenny Mitcham
Digital Archivist
Borthwick Institute for Archives

University of York
Heslington
York
YO10 5DD

Telephone: 01904 321170

Borthwick Institute website: http://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/
Digital archiving blog: http://digital-archiving.blogspot.co.uk/

Twitter: @Jenny_Mitcham

Skype: jenny_mitcham

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Jen,

Thank you for this feedback. A couple of quick responses:

In AtoM 2.2+ at least, it appears that 1) already behaves as you wish it to - in my testing, the @identifier attribute in the <eadid> element uses the user-input identifier from the description. If you have reference code inheritance enabled, then it should also include the country and repository codes.

Regarding 3), if you do not wish to have the address information included in your EAD exports, one workaround would be to temporarily delete the address information from your repository record, and then perform any EAD exports required. If you are regularly exporting or trying to automate this process, I understand that this is not practical. However, including this information can be useful for users wishing to migrate their content, or keep it associated with the institution responsible, so I see this as unlikely to change in AtoM. However, it's possible, if there was a strong use case and sponsorship for development, that this might become a user-configurable option in the future?

Point 2) is a good point, and certainly a possibility. However, I'm not sure that adding a number of empty paragraph elements is necessarily a better solution than using the EAD-supported linebreak element. Is there a reason that you prefer this solution?

We're always trying to improve our EAD mapping, and there are a number of improvements in version 2.2 that should make roundtripping better, and the mappings more consistent. In the meantime, I know that having to do further processing on your EAD exports is likely not ideal, but if the changes are minor, I wonder if you might be able to create your own simple XSLT to transform AtoM's output, removing or changing undesirable elements?

Cheers,

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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[Dan Gillean]

I almost forgot!

In case it is helpful, I have created a quick ISAD export with all fields from AtoM 2.2, which can be used as a sort of crosswalk to see how we are mapping things. I'm attaching it here for reference.

Regards,

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

[Jenny Mitcham]

Thanks for your reply Dan.

Really pleased to hear that issue 1 is solved already. When we did the test export we were on an earlier version of AtoM.

Re point 2 - it isn't so much my opinion - I'm just the messenger!

Re point 3 - I'll pass on your advice.

All the best,

Jen

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