Article on the History of EAD and Its Support for Linked Data

I’ve just had an article come out in Journal of Archival Organization. You can get a self-archived Author’s Accepted Manuscript, etc., here.

I thought I’d write briefly about what I intended to accomplish in it. I was invited as a (now-former) member of TS-EAS to write along the prompt EAD3 and linked data. This seemed extremely in line with my work and some upcoming plans, so I was excited to do so.

However, as I began writing, I realized that a trajectory occurred and that one couldn’t really write about EAD3 without seeing how we got there. Besides, many repositories which used EAD use EAD2002, and even if ArchivesSpace can export EAD3, it doesn’t support some of the nuanced options for linked data which EAD3 allows—instead providing essential backwards compatibility with EAD2002 practices. I wanted to write something practical for a wider range of practitioners.

It’s still fairly technical, a reviewer noted that it could hardly not be technical given what I needed to cover (if it wasn’t fluff) and I’m happy to answer questions or explicate as things come up. Writing it also made me come to terms with the likelihood at that as Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist at PSU, I’m probably going to be essaying the brief overviews of linked data for some time to come. Here’s hoping I continue to improve in writing them.

Citation: Ruth Kitchin Tillman (2016) Opportunities for Encoding EAD for Linked Data Extraction and Publication, Journal of Archival Organization, 13:1-2, 19-36, DOI: 10.1080/15332748.2017.1400725