OAC Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description

1. publicid=

2. "

3. -//

A minus sign (-) followed by two forward slashes (//) indicating that the naming authority is not registered with an official registering agency. (If the participating institutions apply to formally register as naming authorities, the minus sign will change to a plus sign (+). CONSTANT.

4. Name of institution::subordinate named division of institution

The name of the contributing institution assigning a name to the entity. Double colons (::) are used to separate hierarchically distinct elements of the name. The subordinate named division is repeatable. VARIABLE, from one naming agency to another.

The name of the contributing institution, formulated according to DACS or AACR2 rules for corporate names. If the institution is part of a larger named body, then the name of the parent institution will be prefixed to the name if the name of the parent body is not already part of the catalog entry form of the name. Elements of the name are separated by double colons (::).

Examples:

Alameda County Library System::Albany Library

California Historical Society::North Baker Research Library

University of California, Berkeley::Bancroft Library

History San Jose::Research Library

University of California, Irvine::Library::Special Collections and Archives

California State Archives

University of California, Los Angeles::Library::Dept. of Special Collections

University of California, Santa Cruz::

5. //

Separator between name of owner of text and unique name or identifier for the entity. CONSTANT.

6. TEXT

The Public Text Class will always be "TEXT" for finding aids.

7. Public text description

The public text description contains an assigned name or identifier for the finding aid. VARIABLE, from unique finding aid to unique finding aid.

The assigned name or identifier for a finding aid and the archival unit it describes will be the same. The identifier is based on ISAD(G). The identifier will have the following form:

(Country code (ISO 3166)::National repository code::local repository reference code::Title of archival unit)

The entire string is contained in parentheses.

A. ( )

A left parenthesis indicates the opening of the finding aid/archival unit identifier; a right parenthesis indicates the close of the identifier.

B. ::

Double colons (::) are used to separate hierarchical elements of the identifier or reference code.

C. US

Use the ISO 3166 country code for the United States, which is "US".

D. National repository code

Encode your repository code supplied by the Library of Congress. Ask the Library of Congress to establish a repository code if none exists. Repository codes and instructions for requesting a new code may be found on the Library of Congress MARC Code List for Organizations web page.

E. Local repository reference code

Typically this will be the collection number, though it may be a bar code or unique key supplied by a local archival management system.

F. Title of archival unit

The title of the archival unit should match exactly the wording (though not necessarily the punctuation or markup) of the <unittitle> in <archdesc>. The formal syntax for FPI entries specifies that in addition to numbers, and upper- and lowercase letters, only the following marks of punctuation may be used:

' (apostrophe)

( (left parenthesis)

) (right parenthesis)

+ (plus sign)

, (comma)

? (hyphen)

. (period)

: (colon)

= (equal sign)

? (question mark)

/ (forward slash)

Either delete all other marks of punctuation or convert them to the nearest equivalent from the list above. Do not retain diacritical marks. Convert these to their nearest Latin equivalents. Be aware that a XML parser will not flag incorrect <eadid>s as errors.

The reference code or identifier must be unique within the naming domain of the owner of the text, that is, no other finding aid and archival unit can have the same identifier.

The identifier is based on ISAD(G) section 3.1.1. It has been extended in the following way because the local repository reference code may not be unique or some repositories do not assign reference codes: the title of the archival unit is appended as a final element.

If no reference code is assigned, the title of the archival unit must be unique in the repository. If the reference codes are not unique, then the reference code and the title combined must be unique. If no unit title is given, then the reference code must be unique.

A one-to-one correspondence between the EAD instance and the archival unit is assumed. In other words, the unique identifier for the EAD instance and the archival unit are one and the same. If more than one archival unit shares the same identification number and title, or more than one EAD instance is used to describe one archival unit, then distinguishing information should be added to the local identification number and/or title.

8. //

Separator between Public Text Description and Public Text Language. CONSTANT.

9. Public text language

The language in which the entity is encoded. The two letter language code is to be taken from ISO 639. VARIABLE, though most frequently "EN" for English.

10. "

publicid="-//Name of owner::subordinate named division of owner//TEXT (Country code ::National repository code::local repository reference code::Title of archival unit)//EN"

Examples:

publicid="-//Stanford University::Hoover Institution Archives//TEXT (US::CSUZ::::Vasilii Sergeevich Il'in Papers)//EN"

publicid="-//University of California, Santa Cruz::University Library::Special Collections//TEXT (US::CU-SC::MS 74::John Cage Mycology Collection)//EN"