OAC Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description

Appendix A: Example Encoded Finding Aids

Single-level description at collection level (OAC Basic encoding scheme)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE ead PUBLIC "+//ISBN 1-931666-00-8//DTD ead.dtd (Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
Version 2002)//EN" "ead.dtd">

<ead>
<eadheader langencoding="iso639-2b" scriptencoding="iso15924" repositoryencoding="iso15511" countryencoding="iso3166-1" dateencoding="iso8601">
<eadid countrycode="us" identifier="ark:/13030/kt4w10133d" mainagencycode="CU-SC" publicid="PUBLIC "-//University of California, Santa Cruz::University Library::Special Collections//TEXT (US::CU-SC::MS 74::John Cage Mycology Collection)//EN" "ms74.xml"">ms74.xml</eadid>
<filedesc>
<titlestmt>
<titleproper>Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection</titleproper>
<titleproper type="filing">Cage (John) Mycology Collection</titleproper>
<author>Processed by UCSC OAC Unit</author>
</titlestmt>
<publicationstmt>
<publisher>The University Library</publisher>
<address>
<addressline>Special Collections and Archives</addressline>
<addressline>University Library</addressline>
<addressline>University of California, Santa Cruz</addressline>
<addressline>Santa Cruz, California, 95064</addressline>
<addressline>Email: specoll@library.ucsc.edu</addressline>
<addressline>URL: http://library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/</addressline>
</address>
<date>© 2003</date>
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
</publicationstmt>
</filedesc>
<profiledesc>
<creation>Machine-readable finding aid derived from MS Word. Date of source: <date normal="2003-06">June 2003.</date> Machine-readable finding aid created by UCSC OAC Unit.</creation>
<langusage>Description is in <language langcode="eng" scriptcode="latn" >English.</language></langusage>
<descrules>Finding aid prepared using <title>Describing Archives: a Content Standard</title></descrules>
</profiledesc>
</eadheader>

<unittitle label="Title">John Cage Mycology collection</unittitle>
<unitdate normal="1900/1991">1900-1991</unitdate>

<physdesc label="Extent">
<extent>15 linear ft.</extent>
<extent>12 cartons</extent>
</physdesc>

<repository label="Repository">
<corpname source="lcnaf">University of California, Santa Cruz. University Library.
<subarea>Special Collections and Archives</subarea></corpname>
<address>
<addressline>Santa Cruz, California 95064</addressline>
</address>
</repository>

<abstract label="Abstract">This collection includes books, correspondence, journals, newsletters, pamphlets, ephemera and realia related to Cage's interest in the study of mushrooms.</abstract>

<physloc label="Physical location">Stored offsite at NRLF: Advance notice is required for access to the papers.
</physloc>

<langmaterial label="Languages">
<language langcode="eng">English</language>
</langmaterial>

</did>

<accessrestrict>
<head>Access</head>
Collection is open for research.
</accessrestrict>

<userestrict>
<head>Publication Rights</head>
Property rights reside with the University of California. Literary rights are retained by the creators
of the records and their heirs. For permission to publish or to reproduce the material, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives.
</userestrict>

<prefercite>
<head>Preferred Citation</head>
John Cage Mycology Collection. MS 74. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz.
</prefercite>

<acqinfo>
<head>Acquisition Information</head>
Gift of John Cage in 1971.
</acqinfo>

<bioghist>
<head>Biography</head>
John Cage, justifiably famous as a composer, was also very much interested in mycology. He was born in Los Angeles on the 5th of September, 1912. He attended Pomona College, but dropped out after two years and headed to Europe. In 1930, while still in Paris, Cage became interested in both modern music and modern painting. Soon he left and went to Mallorca, where he began painting and writing music himself. The following year he returned to California, settling in at Pacific Palisades. While writing music for the piano, he met Richard Buhlig, who was the first pianist to play the Opus II of Schoenberg. Though Buhlig was not a teacher of composition, he agreed to help Cage with writing music. From Buhlig he went to Henry Cowell [1933-34] and, at Cowell's suggestion, to Adolph Weiss in preparation for studies with Arnold Schoenberg. In order to work with Schoenberg, he gave up painting and concentrated on music.
After two years Cage became an assistant to the film maker Oskar Fischinger, while doing library research work. He married Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff, a student of the bookbinder Hazel Dreis. By 1937 he had found a group of modern dancers who were interested in his music and could put it to use, resulting in his move to Seattle, where he was given a job as a dance accompanist at the Cornish School. Within a couple of years Cage and his wife moved back south to San Francisco, and then in 1941 they moved to Chicago, where he joined the faculty of Moholy Nagy's School of Design in Chicago. While there he was commissioned to write the sound effects music for a CBS Columbia Workshop Play. He was told by the sound effects engineer that anything he could imagine was possible. What he wrote, however, was impractical and too expensive; and the work had to be rewritten for percussion orchestra, copied, and rehearsed in the few remaining days and nights before its broadcast. The play, incidentally, was <title>The City Wears a Slouch Hat</title> by Kenneth Patchen. In 1942 Cage and his wife Xenia moved to New York, where within a couple of years he began working with Merce Cunningham. He and Xenia were divorced in 1945.
In the late 1950's Cage taught occasionally at New York's New School for Social Research. It was during that time that he met Guy Nearing, who was to become his mentor in the study of mushrooms and other wild edible plants. With three other friends they founded the New York Mycological Society. In 1964 Cage was given the North American Mycological Association's Award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology, which is "given annually to recognize a person who has contributed extraordinarily to the advancement of amateur mycology." It was, however, through Cage's enthusiasm for the work of English master gardener Alan Chadwick and his "Student Garden Project" on the new campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz that Special Collections received his "collection of mushroom books and mushroomiana".
John Cage died in New York City on August 12th, 1992.
"Coming back to the notion that my thought is changing. Say it isn't. One thing, however, that keeps it moving is that I'm continually finding new teachers with whom I study. I had studied with Richard Buhlig, Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, Daisetz Suzuki, Guy Nearing. Now I'm studying with N.O. Brown, Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Duchamp. In connection with my current studies with Duchamp, it turns out that I'm a poor chessplayer. My mind seems in some respect lacking, so that I make obviously stupid moves. I do not for a moment doubt that this lack of intelligence affects my music and thinking generally. However, I have a redeeming quality: I was gifted with a sunny disposition."--John Cage, <title>A Year From Monday</title> 1967.

</bioghist>

<scopecontent>
<head>Scope and Content of Collection</head>
This collection includes correspondence, journals, newsletters, pamphlets, books, ephemera and realia related to mushrooms. Cage's personal reference library has been cataloged separately.
</scopecontent>

<controlaccess>
<head>Indexing Terms</head>
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
<persname role="subject cre" source="lcnaf">Cage, John--Archives.</persname>
<persname role="subject oth" rules="aacr2">Chadwick, Alan.</persname>
<persname role="subject oth" rules="aacr2">Graves, Morris, 1910-</persname>
<persname role="subject oth" rules="aacr2">Nearing, G.G. 1890-</persname>
</controlaccess>

</archdesc>
</ead>

Document owner: CDL Digital Special Collections (oacops @ cdlib . org)

Last reviewed: March 2008

URL: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/guidelines/bpgead/ex_oacbasic.html

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