We have used EAD at item level for most materials to be found in
archival collections, which include printed material such as maps, and
objects such as seals (only one sword that I can think of). While this
does include all the pieces in a collection in a single catalogue, it
can lead to the stretching of elements to accommodate the data structure
required by different material types.
In an ideal world I would use MARC21 for maps (a new revision of AACR2
for cartographic materials has been published recently) and a SPECTRUM
compliant museum documentation system for objects, but tying all of
these back together to produce a single catalogue of the collection
could prove a challenge (export all the data into XML; develop Z39.50
profiles?). Often the different materials do not share a common
descriptive or indexing thesaurus, which can further complicate the
whole procedure.
--
# Richard Higgins
# Durham University Library
# Archives & Special Collections
# Palace Green
# Durham
# DH1 3RN
# E-Mail: r.i.higgins@durham.ac.uk
Peter Robinson wrote:
> Digital Medievalist Journal (Inaugural Issue Fall 2004). Call for papers:
http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/cfp.htm
> ----------------
> Dear everyone
>
> I sent this message last week but it failed to spark any discussion. Has
> *anyone* used TEI to encode information about 'museum-like' objects, such as
> swordguards, armour, the like? Or, has anyone used XML at all for this, for
> encoding of information about the individual objects (not the collections, a
> task for EAD)? Or, has anyone seen or heard of or ever known of an
> initiative to develop XML encoding in these areas? CIMI did do it a while
> ago, but seems to have perished.
>
> Has anyone had any experience of using tei to encode information about maps
> and various other objects? We are talking to a group who want to record
> information about maps and sword guards, etc, in a collection otherwise
> encoded in tei. Most of what they need is in <bibl> but some things are
> not.
