Every year, the Description Section of the Society of American Archivists presents the Description Expo, which allows archivists to share innovations in descriptive practice, workflow, and technology and to highlight the description of significant collections. This year's Expo does not have a formal theme, and unlike previous years, the Expo will not have a staffed booth in the Exhibit Area. Instead, the physical presence of the Expo will be a table in the registration/lobby area for SAA2007 at the Fairmont Chicago. This year's submissions include finding aids, delivery systems, and other descriptive tools.
XForms Finding Aid Tool
Contributor: Justin Banks - <jbanks AT austincollege DOT edu>
Narrative and screenshots (MS Word) | User Guide (MS Word) | EAD XForms Tool (ZIP file)
This tool uses XForms to enable the creation of EAD finding aids without the need to deal with XML markup. All of the software necessary to use it is available for free.
Albert C. Barnes The Art In Painting Manuscripts
Contributor: Adrienne Pruitt - <apruitt AT barnesfoundation DOT org>
Narrative (MS Word) | Finding Aid (MS Word) | Online Finding Aid (HTML)
In 2004, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded a grant of $95,397 to the Barnes Foundation’s Archives and Library Department to process the early records of the Foundation and its founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes. The grant provided funding for a full-time processing archivist and for supplies and technical assistance to re-house, arrange, and create finding aids and catalogue records. The manuscripts of Barnes' book, The Art In Painting, were processed using part of this grant.
Calisphere
Contributor: Robin Chandler - <robin.chandler AT ucop DOT edu>
Narrative (PDF) | Calisphere website
Calisphere is a free University of California site that provides access to primary source materials designed around the needs of K-12 educators. The site offers more than 170,000 primary sources that include photographs, documents, newspapers, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other cultural artifacts that reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. The content is from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses and cultural heritage organizations across California. Calisphere also provides a single point of access for more than 500 UC-created web sites and collections that reflect the diverse interests and scholarship of UC, including the humanities, social sciences, math, and science resources.
Indiana University Finding Aids
Contributor: Jenn Riley - <jenlrile AT indiana DOT edu>
Narrative (MS Word) | Indiana University Finding Aids Website
The Indiana University Digital Library Program, Office of University Archives and Records Management, and Lilly Library have launched a newly redesigned site for Indiana University Finding Aids. The new site is driven by the XTF software from the California Digital Library, and the Fedora digital repository software hosts and preserves digital objects and their metadata, including EAD files and item- and file-level descriptions derived from them. The locally-developed, open-source METS Navigator tool delivers multi-page digital objects to end-users.
Contributor: Michael Palmer - <m_p_palmer AT yahoo DOT de>
L. A. Gay & Lesbian Center Records
Narrative (MS Word) | Finding Aid (PDF) | Online Finding Aid
Dignity/USA Records
Narrative (MS Word) | Finding Aid (PDF) | Online Finding Aid
Dan Siminoski Collection on Federal Bureau of Investigation Surveillance of Gays and Lesbians
Narrative (MS Word) | Finding Aid (PDF) | Online Finding Aid
These DACS-compliant finding aids are available in printed form in house, as PDF files from the ONE Archives website, and via the Online Archive of California.
PACSCL Consortial Survey Initiative
Contributor: Christine Di Bella - <cdibella AT hsp DOT org>
Narrative and sample records (PDF)
The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) Consortial Survey Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is assessing unprocessed and underprocessed archival collections in 22 Philadelphia area repositories. In addition to providing institutions with data about collections that will support planning for processing, preservation, exhibitions, and other projects on an individual and consortial basis, the project also seeks to improve intellectual access to the collections surveyed.
Content Standards and Metadata Crosswalks for PastPerfect
Contributor: Ruth Bryan - <rbryan AT rmfdn DOT org>
Content Standards (all MS Word): Accessioning Guidelines, Access Points, Photos (Container Level), Photos (Item Level)
Crosswalks: Photos - Items - Archives, Archives (Fully Processed Collections), Photos - Cultural Objects
The Ruth Mott Foundation is in the process of establishing cataloging standards for the various types of material found in the Archives. We use PastPerfect as our collections management database, so I am building crosswalks that map PastPerfect fields to EAD, DC, and, in appropriate cases, VRA Core 4.0. The archives is also using North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online's (NCECHO) guidelines for EAD and Dublin Core as the basis for these two data structures. They have also added to the crosswalks two columns that map each PastPerfect field to DACS and the Visual Resources Association's Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) data elements (the latter as appropriate).
ArchivesUM
Contributor: Jennie A. Levine - <levjen AT umd DOT edu>
Narrative (MS Word) | ArchivesUM
ArchivesUM is the University of Maryland's system to create and make available finding aids (indexes) to manuscript and archival collections at the University of Maryland Libraries using Encoded Archival Description (EAD). It also includes abstracts to collections for which complete finding aids are not yet available in electronic format. Finding aids are created via a two step process using Microsoft Access and a Java program that connects to the Access database. The finding aids are delivered via the Fedora digital repository system.
University of Tennessee Special Collections Finding Aids
Contributor: Jody DeRidder - <jo AT utk DOT edu>
Narrative (MS Word) | University of Tennessee Finding Aids website | "Googlizing A Digital Library"
The University of Tennessee Special Collections offers a growing collection of over 1000 finding aids and their digitized constituent items. From a single interface, a user has full-text search capabilities over the finding aids with their constituent digitized items, the finding aids alone, or the constituent items alone, as well as browsing Using the <altformavail> <extref> tag, linking is provided between the finding aid and its constituent items, so that the finding aids may provide context for the collection as it is viewed, and so that users may easily access collection materials that meet their needs. In addition, we are leveraging the power of major web search engines in a new initiative to supplement our dynamic delivery system. By adding XML sitemaps, metadata-enhanced full text static HTML, and static browse by author, manuscript number, and subjects, we are better able to serve potential users worldwide.
The Research Papers of Lewis Dabney
Contributor: Mary Kenney - <kenneym AT si DOT edu>
Narrative (MS Word) | Finding Aid (MS Word)
The publication of Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (2005) was the culmination of decades of writing, teaching, and research by Lewis Dabney, professor of English, University of Wyoming. His research papers on Wilson which include a long series of interviews of men and women who were friends, relatives, or colleagues of Edmund Wilson, reveal unique insights into one of the America’s outstanding literary critics of the twentieth century.