EAD@10: A Symposium Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Encoded Archival Description

Sunday, August 31, 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

Description on SAA site

Into the Future: Panel Discussions on the Future of Archival Description
[Questions for the panelists: please add to this list!]

Factors that might influence the future of archival description.
1. What will be the impact of MPLP/Greene-Meissner. If we are moving to a model of less processing up front, and perhaps more iterative processing down the line (“just-in-time description?”) what will be the impact on description or descriptive workflow?

2. Specifically thinking about EAD, that standard was developed to support a range of descriptive practices. With 10 years of encoding under our belts, can we imagine identifying what people actually do in terms of markup? Determine what descriptive elements are most useful both from and end user and management point of view? Using this information to move to a much tighter version of EAD?

3. As different metadata creation centers (libraries, archives, museums, digital library production, institutional repository, etc.) come into closer contact with one another, what will be the influence of these communities on one another?

4. Will some aspects of descriptions (names, places, subject terms, etc.) become networked? If so, what will be in the impact on archival description. Would networked elements of description allow for some automatic identification of terms, rather than implicit markup?

5. Will archival description move away from a document-centered model? What are the possibilities for moving to other models of representation? Shifting away from hierarchical structures and towards relational structures, for example.

6. What will be the impact of user contributed metadata?

7. What will be the influence of electronic records?

8. Will metadata creation tools lead us in new directions, or do they simply model current practices?

9. It can be argued that EAD has changed archival descriptive practice. What standards will change our practices going forward?

10. It can be argued that technology (specifically, the advent of the web) has changed our approach towards archival descriptive practice. What new technologies will change our practice going forward?

11. How will our evolving understanding of end user needs shape archival descriptive practice?

Speakers
Mary W. Elings Archivist for Digital Collections University of California, Berkeley

Mark A. Matienzo (Questions 3, 5, 2) Applications Developer The New York Public Library

Michelle Light (Questions 1, 7, 10) Archivist University of California, Irvine

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth (Questions 3, 8, 10) Metadata Analyst Discovery Communications Inc

Katherine M. Wisser (Questions 4, 9) Director of Instructional Services and Doctoral Candidate University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Related Resources
EAD Roundtable Meeting