NCEAD Standards Working Group -- Home

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.

North Carolina Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Project Standards Working Group

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 second edition of the Best Practice Guidelines is now available at: EAD 2002!

Composition: Membership in the SWG is open. Anyone interested in participating should express interest to the Chair. Chairs will be appointed by the Executive Committe and if not a member, will be non-voting members of that body.

Chair: Kathy Wisser, NC ECHO Metadata Coordinator

North Carolina ECHO, Exploring Cultural Heritage Online, http://www.ncecho.org, is the World Wide Web doorway to the special collections of North Carolina's libraries, archives, museums, and historic sites.

The NC ECHO project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.

This innovative and collaborative project seeks to build a statewide framework for digitization in order to facilitate deep, wide, and comprehensive access to the holdings of North Carolina's cultural institutions. NC ECHO is co-sponsored by Duke University Libraries and the State Library of North Carolina.

Questions and comments may be directed to the NC ECHO staff. [mail to: ncecho@ncmail.net]