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North Carolina Encoded Archival Description (NCEAD) is a working group within NC ECHO that examines the implementation of EAD for North Carolina institutions and provides best practice guidelines, tools, assistance, and other resources. The overall goal of NCEAD is to encourage standardization throughout encoded archival finding aids in order to enable inter-institutional searching of cultural heritage materials. Membership is open to any interested North Carolina
cultural institution.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND WORKING GROUPS
NCEAD operates with the generous support of professionals from within the participating institutions. The Executive Committee is constructed of single representatives from various institutions throughout the state that provide institutional perspective to the work of NCEAD. The Working Groups, Standards and Technical, approach the various challenges to implementing EAD in a state-wide consortium, including the construction of Best Practice Guidelines and template for the current standards, controlled vocabulary assistance, Standards cross-walking, tool construction for various software packages and stylesheet construction and sharing documentation. NCEAD would only be possible with continued commitment and involvement by those interested in maintaining and enriching the current implementation of the standard.
The Executive Committee of NCEAD is responsible for overall policy decisions, approval of documents, and decision-making responsibilities. In making its deliberations, the Exectuive Committee will rely upon information from the two existing working groups: Standards (NCEAD SWG) and Technical (NCEAD TWG). The Executive Committee will meet twice yearly and as necessary. They will be responsible for presentations made at forums such as SNCA and for convening large informational gatherings if they feel it is warranted. Minutes from Executive Committee meetings will be posted on the NCEAD web site.
The Standards Working Group will be responsible for the maintenance and revision of the NCEAD Best Practices Guidelines. They will review emerging EAD standards and revise the existing Best Practices Guidelines to accommodate those standards, in addition to maintaining legacy versions. They are also resposible for the udnerstanding and dissemination of information on existing and new metadata schemas and upcoming contenct standards (CUSTARD), as they affect the application of EAD for NCEAD instituions. In addition, subgroups within the Standards Working Group will be formed to examine NCEAD standards in relation to specific descriptive challenges, including non-paper media and collection level finding aids, and to create a subset of best practices.
The Technical Working Group will be responsible for the maintenance and revision of a standard EAD template that can be customized and used by each institution to create the EAD documents for the web. This would require preparing new XSL style-sheets and maintaining and revising existing style-sheets after taking into account new metadata schemas and standards. If mass changes become necessary in existing encoded documents, this group would decide on the use of scripting to effect the changes. The group would also explore new avenues like search engines and XML indexing and make recommendations about the right approach to adopt on these. Once a solution has been agreed upon, this group would work towards its implementation and provide adequate technical know-how wherever necessary. The working group will review software applications and make recommendations.
EAD 2002 BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES
Web version
Print version(pdf)
| NCEAD 2002 TOOLS
The NCEAD 2002 Tools are provided to expedite institutional adoption of the Encoded Archival Description 2002 standard. These tools were created by members of the Technical Working Group in collaboration with the NCEAD Best Practice Guidelines EAD 2002 2nd edition template established by the Standards Working Group. For access to the first edition of the Best Practice Guidelines EAD 2002, please check Archives. To download these files to your computer, it is strongly recommended that you use the following procedure:
- On your C:\ create a folder called "downloads"
- From this page, move your mouse to the document you would like to download
- Right click on the link and choose "Save target as"
- A "Save As" window will appear to save the document where you last saved information. Be sure to select the "C:\downloads\ folder to save your downloaded documents. DO NOT RENAME the files.
- Once the files are saved in the C:\downloads\ folder they are ready to be unzipped using WinZip or comparable program.
- From the C:\downloads\ folder, cut and paste the files into the various locations in your C:\notetab\ directory as specified in "File Management for NCEAD" in the NCEAD Best Practice Guidelines 2nd Edition.
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| NCEAD 2002 Toolkit (2005 revision) |
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This toolkit consists of batch files, saxon and validation files, error file, NoteTab Template and Clip Libraries, and an ead file that contains stylesheets, dtds, and the correct folder structure.
NCEAD_2005_revised_toolkit.zip
This toolkit was updated in June 2005 to reflect changes in the best practice guidelines, eadlocal.ent, and stylesheets. All files are available separately below.
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| NCEAD Conversion Kit |
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This conversion kit consists of the conversion programs, folders, and batch commands for the conversion of Version 1.0 finding aids to EAD 2002 according to NCEAD's Best Practice Guidelines for EAD 2002. This is a slightly amended version of the conversion protocol established by the Society of American Archivists and should ensure valid conversion of your finding aids.
ncead2002conv.zip
Directions for the use of this conversion kit are available at Conversion Kit from NCEAD for Version 1.0 to EAD 2002.
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| Clip Libraries and Templates for NoteTab |
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Three Clip Libraries have been developed for NCEAD
The clip libraries should be placed in the Libraries folder of your notetab directory. The Template file should be placed in the Templates folder of your notetab directory. These NoteTab specific files work together. These files are included in the NCEAD2002_Toolkit.zip above.
2005 Revised Clip Libraries Coming Soon!
Dtd files
These dtd files should be placed in the dtds Folder of your ead directory. Note that NCEAD requires use of these dtd files rather than those on the Library of Congress EAD website. These files do not represent the complete dtd structure required for implementing EAD. For the complete structure, please see the NCEAD2002_Toolkit.zip above. These files are included in the NCEAD2002_Toolkit.zip above.
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| Stylesheets |
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NCEAD General Stylesheets:
This set of stylesheets is generalized for NCEAD institutions. The stylesheets are customizable (using the Cust Stylesheet clip from NCEAD Styles Clip 2002 library in NoteTab) and offer the selection of creating either a non-frames or frames version. Because these are applicable for a wide variety of institutions, they are basic in nature. Institutions are encouraged to work on customizing other aspects of these stylesheets in order to meet individual institutional needs. The stylesheets were developed by Vikram Ahmed, former Technical Working Group Chair. These stylesheets are part of the NCEAD_2005_revised_toolkit.zip file above.
- eadcust.xsl
- Customizable portion of the NCEAD general stylesheet for color and appearance called by either eadbase.xsl (non-frames) or eadframes.xsl (frames) stylesheet.
- eadshared.xsl
- NCEAD general stylesheet for displaying the matter in both frames and non-frames version. Called by either eadbase.xsl (non-frames) or eadframes.xsl (frames) stylesheet.
- eadbase.xsl
- Non-frames version of the NCEAD general stylesheet. Works in conjunction with eadcust.xsl and eadshared.xsl stylesheets.
- eadframes.xsl
- Frames version the NCEAD general stylesheet. Works in conjunction with eadcust.xsl and eadshared.xsl stylesheets.
- eadfo.xsl
- Stylesheet for creating a pdf (printable) version of the Finding Aid.
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NCEAD DOCUMENTS
Review of the RLG Best Practice Guidelines for EAD 2002 by Joshua McKim and Katherine M. Wisser, February 2003
[download pdf]
Outsourcing EAD: Guidelines for NCEAD Institutions considering an outsourcing solution for encoding legacy finding aids by Martha Elmore, Diana Williams, and Katherine M. Wisser, August 2004
[download pdf]
RESOURCES
Official EAD Version 2002 Web Site
EAD Help Pages (The EAD Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists)
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