As I’ve been putting together a CONTENTdm interface to our EAD records, I’ve been using the NWDA’s website as a template…the idea being that users working within our site could start local and then move out to the regional database and still see a like interface with like functionality. However, this has meant doing some additional modification to the CONTENTdm file structure. CONTENTdm’s file structure, by default, utilizes a template-based system. However, the template-based system is build around a global template structure. In our own local system, I’ve removed the need for the majority of the global files — but handling the item_viewer, browse and results templates can be a pain since CONTENTdm assumes that the only two template files can be modified directly and really only makes accommedation for two templates. There are other problems as well — but I’ve found that they can be fairly easily fixed by adding a few lines of code at the top of the file to check for local copies of these template files. By doing that, I’ve found I can modify just about any template file without having to make any changes to the master template files — which is really what I’m looking for. Anyway, here’s a look at the revised websites. Browse by title and you will see a browse template that is not currently available in CONTENTdm, but fills our need. (OSU CONTENTdm EAD Collection Website).
–Terry
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One response to “CONTENTdm/EAD III”
[…] For that reason, I decided to revisit Daniel Pitti’s introductory EAD article published in a 1999 issue of D-Lib Magazine. Pitti’s article provided an introduction to the digital library community in the aftermath of the EAD 1.0 release in 1998, which made EAD compliant with XML and jump-started web delivery efforts using this standard. ( 2 ) Pitti defined EAD as “an emerging standard used internationally in an increasing number of archives and manuscripts libraries to encode data describing corporate records and personal papers.” The standard is “administered and maintained jointly by the Society of American Archivists and the United States Library of Congress.” Digital preservation was a primary driver in creating EAD; Pitti noted that ( 3 ) As archives increasingly employ computer and network technology to create and maintain essential, valuable information, they need reasonable assurance that the information they create will endure rapid changes in hardware and software. If archivists do not take this requirement into consideration, then they will find — indeed, many have already found — that information created yesterday is no longer usable today. Hardware- and software-independent encoding standards offer the only reasonable assurance of enduring information. ( 4 ) Another motivation described by Pitti, demonstrated by the NWDA’s database, was the possibility of creating union catalogs of electronic finding aids. As Pitti noted, “such access will enable libraries and archives to easily share information about related but different records and collections, and dispersed records and collections.” ( 5 ) Taking a step back from Pitti’s foundational article, I’d like to describe what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of EAD, based upon current developments. ( 6 ) The strengths are illustrated in the expanding online collections based on EAD. Next month, I will be attending an RLG-sponsored conference that will enable representatives of different EAD efforts to meet and communicate on development efforts. ( 7 ) Some significant barriers to EAD implementation remain. I found in 2003, when investigating search and retrieval software packages for the planned NWDA effort, that market solutions for EAD searching are limited. I think there’s been some progress here during the intervening two years (for example, with EAD support in the widely-used OCLC/DiMeMa CONTENTdm product), but commercial EAD options are still very limited. One internal technical challenge that stands out is the need to present large finding aids or registers using XSLT; these transformations require reading the document to memory. ( 8 ) For a somewhat dated but useful summary of technical issues relating to EAD, see James Roth’s article “Serving Up EAD” (which was later developed into a 2001 American Archivist article). ( 9 ) […]