Ruth Kitchin Tillman

de KC3AF

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a licensed ham operator since December 2020 and active in my local ham radio club since Spring 2021. I enjoy our nets, public service events, fox hunting activities, and occasional special outings like POTA. I sometimes use APRS while hiking.

I upload contacts to QRZ. I have not been able to get LotW to renew my certificate when it came back online after the disaster. I’m saving those to upload once that’s been sorted out. At some point I hope to have a proper QSL card, I’m just very picky!

HF Radios: Yaesu 991A, Kenwood TS-480SAT

VHF Radios: Yaesu 991A, Kenwood TM-271

Digital modes: primarily FT8, getting started with fldigi so I can do more actual messaging

Antennas: fan dipole 80/40/20 (and 15m resonant) outside my house, 2m quarter wave ground plane in my home office, 10m occasional-use at home, AlphaAntenna Hextenna dipole for the field.

My radios are connected to a PC running Linux Mint. I’m keeping an eye out for a low quality Windows PC so I can use conventional software more easily.

My first callsign was KC3QXJ - distinct but hard to say in the phonetic alphabet and a real CW headache. Once I tested up to Extra class, I applied for KC3AF. KC3AF was formerly held by silent key “Skip” Hoffman.

73! 🫡

CV

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Contact me at my first and last names at gmail. Learn how to index and use my name.

Employment

Pennsylvania State University Libraries

Systems Librarian (Associate Librarian):

Faculty Rank:

Associate Librarian (July 2023 - present)
Assistant Librarian (September 2017 — July 2023)

Titles:

3-year endowed position: Sally W. Kalin Early Career Librarian for Technological Innovations (July 2021 — June 2024)
Previous title: Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist (September 2017 - June 2026)

Responsibilities:

Leading a project to migrate the Libraries from Sirsi Symphony (implemented circa 2000) to Ex Libris Alma.
Improving the Libraries’ discovery through the implementation and maintenance of a Blacklight library catalog. Managing the Libraries’ Summon platform and collaborating on its homepage search.
Leading Penn State’s participation in PCC Wikidata pilot along with wikidata workshops. Exploring opportunities for creation and use of linked data within library data projects.
Solving complex data reuse and reporting projects with data from sources including the library’s catalog, ArchivesSpace, and WorldShare. For example: identified library materials with possible arsenic in bindings, assisted Special Collections with data for planning a space management project, and queried WorldCat holdings across BTAA libraries to support a colleague’s research.

Received the 2024 University Libraries Award, Penn State University Libraries.

Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame

Digital Collections Librarian, Assistant Librarian February 2016 — August 2017

Implemented working digital collections infrastructure from metadata loading to display in CurateND, the library’s institutional repository. Consulted with internal stakeholders, wrote development specs and collaborated with developers, documented processes, and published digital collections.

NASA Goddard Library through Cadence Group

Metadata Librarian II June 2014 — January 2016

Managed regular harvest and data management for the NASA Goddard Institutional Repository. Led project to create new collection of 488 digitized issues of the Goddard News, allowing researchers to access the first 40 years of Goddard’s history.

Jacob Burns Law Library, George Washington University Law School

Serials and Continuations Specialist December 2008 — June 2014

Oversaw handling of serials, periodicals, and continuing publications from initial receipt through delivery to shelvers. Performed 18 months of original cataloging of law journal colloquia as monograph records.

George Washington University Law School

Archival Field Study Intern Spring 2013

Arranged and described the school’s unprocessed collection of miscellaneous papers and materials. Created finding aids for the collection in Word/PDF and Archivists’ Toolkit.

Self

Wordpress Consultant July 2008 — July 2010

Set up, upgraded, migrated, and imported Wordpress installations for bloggers and small businesses.
Restored and repaired hacked sites.
Developed Wordpress themes using XHTML, CSS, and PHP.

Other Library Positions

Clerical Aide, Hyattsville Public Library, Jan — Dec 2008
Page, Newark Free Library, 2001 — 2007
Technical Services student worker, Murray Library, Messiah College, 2004 — 2005

Awards

2024 University Libraries Award, Penn State University Libraries

Projects

“Oral History of LIAS.” (2026) liashistory.com/ Interviews with 14 current and former Penn State Libraries employees about the Library Information Access System (ILS) developed and used at Penn State from 1978 to 1999.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“Morale in Mind: Key Factors for Leadership Planning a Library System Migration,” Journal of Library Administration, DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2026.2714063

Heberlein, Regine and Ruth Kitchin Tillman. “Hollinger’s Edge: The Retrieval Object at the Margins of the Archival Ontology.” Journal of Archival Organization, 22, no.3-4 (2025): 129-159. Accepted copy in Scholarsphere / DOI: 10.1080/15332748.2025.2597048

Woods, Stephen, and Ruth Kitchin Tillman. “Supporting Doctoral Research in Sociology in the BTAA.” Pennsylania Libraries: Research & Practice, 13, no. 1 (2025). DOI: 10.5195/palrap.2025.303.

Tillman, Ruth Kitchin, and Gala Campos Oaxaca. “Crossing Silos: Assessing the Utility of Identity Attributes in Name Reconciliation.” portal: Libraries and the Academy, 25, no. 2 (2025): 299-319. DOI: 10.1353/pla.2025.a955947.

Salo, Dorothea and Ruth Kitchin Tillman. “Ethics of Sustaining Linked Data Infrastructure” in Ethics in Linked Data, edited by Alexandra Provo, Kathleen Burlingame, and B.M. Watson, 23-39. Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2023. Accepted copy in ScholarSphere

“Indispensable, Interdependent, and Invisible: A Qualitative Inquiry into Library Systems Maintenance.” College & Research Libraries, 84, no. 1 (2023): 121-136. DOI: 10.5860/crl.84.1.121

Roke, Elizabeth and Ruth Tillman. “Pragmatic Principles for Archival Linked Data.” American Archivist, 85 no. 1 (2022): 173–201. DOI: 10.17723/2327-9702-85.1.173

“Barriers to Ethical Name Modeling in Current Linked Data Encoding Practices” in Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control, edited by Jane Sandberg, 241-257. Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2019. Accepted copy in ScholarSphere

“Opportunities for Encoding EAD for Linked Data Extraction and Publication.” Journal of Archival Organization, 12, no. 1-2 (2016): 19-36, Accepted copy in Scholarsphere / DOI: 10.1080/15332748.2017.1400725. [accepted & published, Fall 2017]

“Where Are We Now? Survey on Rates of Faculty Self-Deposit in Institutional Repositories.” Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 5, no. 1 (2017). DOI: 10.7710/2162-3309.2203.

“Extracting, Augmenting, and Updating Metadata in Fedora 3 and 4 Using a Local OpenRefine Reconciliation Service.” Code4Lib Journal, 31 (2016). Accessed March 19, 2016. http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/11179.

Keynotes

“Scaffolding Possibility: Systems, Stress, and Small Acts of Care,” Code4Lib, Princeton, NJ. March 10, 2025. code4lib keynote text

“Waiting for Production: Making Use of Long Liminality,” Midwest Collaborative for Library Services Linked Data for Libraries Users Group (LDUG) - Fall Meeting, Online. November 13, 2024. ldug keynote text

“The Interdependent Library System: Revisiting Human Aspects of Library Automation,” VALA2024 - ReITerated: Getting IT Back to Grassroots, Naarm / Melbourne, VIC, Australia. July 10, 2024. vala keynote text

“Between Exports and Infrastructure: Linked Data Systems in 2022,” Potomac Technical Processing Librarians 98th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. October 14, 2022. ptpl keynote text

With Sandy Rodriguez. “Out of Silence, Toward Solidarity,” New York Archives Week Symposium. Online. October 22, 2020. ny archives week keynote text

Other Publications

Babcock, Kelli, Regine Heberlein, Anna Björnsson McCormick, Elizabeth Russey Roke, Greta Kuriger Suiter, and Ruth Tillman. “The Power of Parallel Description: Wikidata and Archival Discovery.” White paper published in The Lighting the Way Handbook: Case Studies, Guidelines, and Emergent Futures for Archival Discovery and Delivery, eds. M.A. Matienzo and Dinah Handel, October 2021. DOI: 10.25740/gg453cv6438

Rodriguez, Sandy, Ruth Tillman, Amy Wickner, et al. “Collective Equity: A Handbook for Designing and Evaluating Grant-Funded Positions.” Collective Responsibility Labor Advocacy Toolkit, March 2020. https://toolkit.dobetterlabor.com/collective-equity/.

Rodriguez, Sandy and Ruth Tillman. “Responses & Retrospectives: Toward Collective Change, A Response to Precarious Labor Practices and a Roadmap to Creating Ethical Grant-Funded Positions.” Archives AWARE!, March 2020. https://archivesaware.archivists.org/2020/03/31/response-retrospectives-toward-collective-change-a-response-to-precarious-labor-practices-and-a-roadmap-to-creating-ethical-grant-funded-positions/.

Arnold, Hillel, et. al. ““Do Better” -Love(,) Us Guidelines for Developing and Supporting Grant-Funded Positions in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums.” Do Better Labor, January 2020. https://dobetterlabor.com/

Tillman, Ruth Kitchin and Sandy Rodriguez. “Digital Labor Forum Tackles Temp Jobs on Grant, Digitization Projects | Peer to Peer Review.” Library Journal. November 7, 2019.

Rodriguez, Sandy, Ruth Tillman, Amy Wickner, Stacie Williams, and Emily Drabinski. Collective Responsibility: Seeking Equity for Contingent Labor in Libraries, Archives, and Museums. September, 2019.

“Editorial: Beyond Posters: Hospitality in Libtech.” Code4Lib Journal, 40 (2018). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/13432.

Tillman, Ruth, Alan Harnum, Danielle Robichaud, Anna-Sophia Zingarelli-Sweet, and Brad Houston. “Roundtable: Should library workers learn to code?.” Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 12(2) (2017), doi: 10.21083/partnership.v12i2.4121. https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/4121

“Editorial: Introspection as Activism, or, Getting Our Houses in Order.” Code4Lib Journal, 35 (2017). Accessed April 30, 2016. http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/12232.

Workshops Led

Rodriguez, Sandy and Ruth Tillman. “Designing for Labor Equity: Evaluative Tools from the Collective Responsibility Project.” Museum Computer Network. Online. November 12, 2020.

Rodriguez, Sandy and Ruth Tillman. “Designing for Labor Equity: Evaluative Tools from the Collective Responsibility Project.” Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, Issues and Advocacy Section. Online. August 14, 2020.

“Linked Data, Archival Data, and Wikidata.” Philadelphia Art Museum Library. Virtual. April 27, 2020.

“Learning Cell Cross in OpenRefine.” Virtual. March 26, 2020. cell cross text and recording

Presentations

Tillman, Ruth K. and Gala Campos Oaxaca. “Crossing Silos: Assesing the Utility of Identity Attributes in Name Reconciliation.” OVGTSL 2024, Dublin, OH, May 23, 2024.

“The Collective Responsibility Toolkit”, Library Publishing Coalition professional development event, Online. November 28, 2023.

Tillman, Ruth K. and Regine Heberlein. “Hollinger’s Box: The retrieval object at the edge of the ontology.” SWIB 2023, Berlin, September 12, 2023.

“Ethics in Linked Data Book Panel.” 2023 LD4 Conference: Exploring Linked Data in GLAM: From Inspiration to Implementation, Online, July 11, 2023.

Dysert, Anna, Anna Björnsson McCormick, Elizabeth Russey Roke, Kelli Babcock, Regine Heberlein, and Ruth Tillman “Plenary session – Unconference: Building Communities of Practice.” Association of Canadian Archivists Annual Meeting, Mi’gma’gi/Prince Edward Island, June 30, 2023.

“Time is a Property of Data” SWIB 2022, Online, December 1, 2022. (Lightning Talk)

“Beyond Implementation: Positioning Maintenance as a Core Commitment in Libraries,” April 2022 Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series, Coalition for Networked Information, Online. text and recording

Rodriguez, Sandy and Ruth Tillman. “Sustaining Our Digital Future: Labor Tools to Create Resilient Workplaces.” Computers in Libraries 2021. Online. March 25, 2021.

“Marketing Discovery.” Marketing Discovery & Assessing Usability: ETS Discovery Webinar Series Part II. Reference and User Services Association, American Library Association. Online. June 4, 2020.

“Wikidata Recommendation for Archival Data.” Code4Lib 2020, Pittsburgh, PA, March 9, 2020. (Lightning Talk)

Tillman, Ruth, Sandy Rodriguez, Amy Wickner, Angel Diaz, and Courtney Dean. “The State of Temporary Labor: Trends and Themes from SAA’s Issues and Advocacy Section + IMLS-Funded Research.” DLF Forum 2019, Tampa, FL, October 14, 2019.

Lassere, Monique, Ana Ndumu, Mark Parsons, Ruth Tillman, and Patricia Hswe. “Interrogating the Ethic of Care in Information Maintenance.” Maintainers III: Practice, Policy, and Care, Washington, DC, October 8, 2019.

“Maintenance, Labor, and the Classic Catalog.” Maintainers III: Practice, Policy, and Care, Washington, DC, October 8, 2019.

“Creating linked data converts: syncretism in the cataloging department.” LD4 Conference on Linked Data in Libraries, Boston, MA, May 10, 2019.

“Series of Tubes: Moving Subjects from MARC to ASpace.” ArchivesSpace Online Forum, March 18, 2019.

Arnold, Hillel, Rafia Mirza, Sandy Rodriguez, and Ruth Tillman. “Valuing Labor When You’re the Man (Kinda).” DLF Forum 2018, Henderson, NV, October 15, 2018.

Chao, Zoe and Ruth Tillman “Between Bento Boxes and Security Blankets.” Big Ten Academic Alliance Library Initiatives Conference, Urbana, IL, May 30, 2018.

Rodriguez, Sandy, Ruth Tillman, and Amy Wickner. “Reproducing Contingency: Grant-Funded Labor in Digital Libraries.” Libraries in the Context of Capitalism, New York, NY, February 2, 2018.

“Management & Reuse: What Your Metadataists Do.” SamveraConnect, Evanston, IL, November 8, 2017. (Lightning Talk)

Hardesty, Julie and Ruth Tillman. “Documenting Our MAPS.” SamveraConnect, Evanston, IL, November 8, 2017.

Nowviskie, Bethany, et. al. “Our DLF Now.” DLF Forum 2017, Pittsburgh, PA, October 25, 2017.

Tillman, Ruth, Sandy Rodriguez, Lisa Hinchliffe, Graeme Slaght, and Emily Drabinksi. “Valuing Labor in Digital Libraries.” DLF Forum 2017, Pittsburgh, PA, October 24, 2017.

“Stalin and ampersands and Lebenen, oh my!” Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, Portland, OR, July 26, 2017 (Lightning Talk)

“Results from a Survey of 81 Institutional Repositories.” HydraConnect, Boston, MA, October 5, 2016. (Lightning Talk)

“Pull it Together! Reusing Your Own Metadata and Augmenting Collections with OpenRefine.” Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY, May 27, 2016.

“Pull it Together: Exporting, Reconciling, and Batch Updating Metadata in Fedora 3 & 4.” DC Fedora User Group Meeting, College Park, MD, October 8, 2015.

“EAD 2002 to EAD3: the N big changes.” Code4Lib DC Unconference, Washington, DC, August 11, 2014.

Schwartz, Molly and Ruth Tillman. “Embracing Archivists’ Toolkit to Implement EAD.” MARAC, Richmond, VA, October 25-27, 2012. (student paper)

Professional Service

Creator and Maintainer, EADiva.com June 2013 — present

Rewrote and re-envisioned the EAD 2002 tag library in an interlinked format with language more suitable for XML beginners. Now used in many library school classes.
Published tutorials for EAD and Archivists’ Toolkit beginners.
Released second, EAD3-focused version of the site one year before EAD3’s release with continued updating to match final changes to the schema.
Created multi-site experience to handle multiple versions of EAD, deprecated and new elements, and changes between EAD 2002 and EAD3.

Digital Library Federation

DLF Labor Working Group co-facilitator January 2017 — [semi-hiatus]

Code4Lib Journal

Editor and Wordpress Administrator June 2015 — September 2021

Samvera/Hydra Community

Samvera/Hydra Metadata Interest Group co-facilitator January 2017 — November 2019

Society of American Archivists

Peer-reviewer June 2016 – Putting Descriptive Standards to Work. edited by Kris Kiesling and Christopher J. Prom. Chicago: Society of American American Archivists (2017).

Member, Technical Subcommittee for Encoded Archival Standards, Appointed August 2016 — October 2017

Co-Chair, EAD Roundtable Steering Committee, Elected August 2014 — August 2016

Member, Technical Subcommittee for EAD (ex-officio) August 2014 — August 2016

Education

University of Maryland, iSchool

Master of Library Science December 2013 (College Park, MD)

Relevant coursework includes:

Organization of Information;
Legal Issues in Managing Information;
Digital Preservation;
Archival Arrangement and Description;
Management of Electronic Records & Information;
Database Design (taken at The Catholic University of America, credit transferred)

Messiah College

Bachelor of Arts, English Literature May 2007 (Grantham, PA)

College Honors Program, summa cum laude

Contact

Sat, 21 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

You can reach me at a gmail address comprised of my first and last name (same as the domain name). For work purposes, you can contact me using my Penn State contact information.

How My Father Taught Me the Power of Automation

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post is based on the eulogy I gave at my father’s funeral. Although we had a difficult relationship, I learned some extraordinarily valuable life skills from him. I do not think I would be who I am today without that.

I don’t recall precisely when my local library adopted Dynix.¹ I know I was old enough to remember when it happened and that we had a card catalog running alongside it for a while. Based on other life events, I can say I was 8 or younger—first few years of the 90s.

I was fortunate enough to have a family computer (OS/2 4eva) and my own library card, so my father taught me and my little sister how to use this new method of checking on library books which were due and renewing them. He set up an auto-dial program so that when we double-clicked the icon, it would open a Telnet session. We learned to navigate the menus and type in our card numbers and PINs.²

But then my father did something else. As the kind of software engineer who enjoyed a challenge, he wrote a library program.

Let me backpedal a moment to describe the library rituals which shaped our lives and this program. We went to the library every Tuesday night at 7pm. We were allowed to check out a fairly large number of books, and had to be ready to check out by 8:30, so we would get out of the library on time (sorry Miss Ruth, Miss Shirley, Miss Wanda, Adam, Beth, et. al. for all those nights we pushed 8:50 instead).

When we got home, my parents would collect all the date due cards from the back of the books. These went in a little drawer of the otherwise unused writing desk in the living room, along with our library cards. On Tuesday nights around 5pm or 6:30 (just after our 6pm dinner), we would grab the cards and begin the giant book hunt. We couldn’t leave until every due book was found. If finding something proved impossible, we’d take the card to the library and renew it, but this was seen as a failure.

So, when the library allowed us to check our accounts through Telnet, my father had an idea. The program he wrote seemed like magic at first. But as a curious child who used Telnet on her own to renew books, etc., I soon figured out the steps it was doing.

First, the program dialed into telnet. It would login to each person’s library account and acquire a list of books checked out to them. It saved this list in its memory and then login to the next card. After cycling through our family’s four cards, it pulled all the checkouts together sorted by date due, and then sent the whole thing to the printer.

We could execute the program and, in a minute or two, have a printed list of all the books we had checked out. We would run around the house with the list, finding books, crossing them off, and piling them by the front steps. Because the program separated everything due in the next 7 days, we could easily see what had to be found. We’d add anything else we were done with, of course, and then would present our parents with the proof that nobody would get overdue fines. We used that program up until the library shut down its Telnet access.³

As we prepared for my father’s funeral, I thought about how little things like this made me who I am today. I’ve been thinking of this again as I read through old newsletters about Penn State’s homegrown ILS, which it developed through the 80s and 90s.

What I learned from the little programs he built us⁴ wasn’t the logistics of how to build these—I’m still not sure about how the data grab worked and I am scared of sending things to printers—but that such things could be done. His early attempts to teach me programming were not successful, but he taught me so much by example.

As I said at his funeral, I am so much better about just trying to do things with computers because I learned at an early age that one could. I learned that every repetitive task is composed of steps. I learned that mistakes weren’t the end of the world. I learned that computer programming sometimes involves getting very angry at the computer (or yourself and taking it out on the computer), but that doesn’t mean you should give up. I learned that compatibilities break and you have to fix them. I even learned that sometimes people shut down really good services (like Telnet) and your stuff completely breaks.

While I learned the actual skills and techniques through self-teaching, tutorials, and workshops, the underlying principles that make me willing to try and fail and try again are something I learned much earlier. And I’m grateful for that.

Footnotes

But how cool is it that I know it was Dynix? There’s a spoiler here— I started working for the system when I was 16 and, as a weekly patron, I’m sure that we didn’t do any big migrations between first automation and when I started working.back
At least, I think we had PINs at that point? I honestly don’t recall the timeline clearly enough on whether PINs were involved in Telnet, but the 2019 part of me says “surely?"back
There were times when moving pieces broke, like changes to how our operating system and printer talked to each other. He would repair the program or make temporary fixes like saving it to a document we could view and print manually. This taught me about compatibility and the frustrations of maintaining a working program.back
He also built a GUI program which allowed one to create a shopping list based on item type and then printed items aisle-by-aisle according to the local Pathmark’s layout.back

Photograph of Dynix telnet screen by Skylarstrickland, downloaded from wikimedia commons.

Self-Archive of "Opportunities for Encoding EAD for Linked Data Extraction and Publication"

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

My article on the development of support for linked data in Encoded Archival Description (including an overview of support which existed before EAD3), “Opportunities for Encoding EAD for Linked Data Extraction and Publication,” published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Archival Organization can be viewed at. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332748.2017.1400725

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

Or, you may view the self-archived Author’s Accepted Manuscript version or a zip containing additional versions including .doc. Please contact me if you have questions about citing the article after viewing these versions, as Taylor & Francis have also given me some download links for peers.

Written Elsewhere

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A short list of blog posts and articles that I’ve written on other sites:

“Editorial: Beyond Posters: On Hospitality in Libtech” Code4Lib Journal 40 (2018)
“Editorial: Introspection as Activism, or, Getting Our Houses in Order.” Code4Lib Journal 35 (2017)
“Extracting, Augmenting, and Updating Metadata in Fedora 3 and 4 Using a Local OpenRefine Reconciliation Service.” Code4Lib Journal 31 (2016)
Making Library School’s Dirty Little Secret Work for You at I Need A Library Job
Basic Tips for Working with Patrons with Disabilities at Hack Library School
How to Install Archivists’ Toolkit With a Local Database on Your Computer at EADiva
How to Ask for a Reference at I Need a Library Job

Appendix 1 - Archivists' Toolkit Import

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is the appendix to Ruth Kitchin Tillman and Molly Schwartz’s 2012 MARAC Presentation on Archivists’ Toolkit and EAD.

In comparing the University of Maryland’s EAD file for the Richard White collection and the Archivists’ Toolkit record created from import along with its export file, several problems were noticed which are not germane to the paper’s topic, but which may be of interest to those who are learning Archivists’ Toolkit in order to manage EAD records already in existence. These issues are outlined in this appendix.

A. Multiple date fields

The program only imported the first date from the <publicationstmt> field.
The program imported both the @type=inclusive and @type=bulk fields from <unitdate> but conflated them into the same field, yielding an odd-looking “1905-1920 1905-1920.”

B. MARC fields and @encodinganalog

Archivist’s Toolkit did not import MARC fields from @encodinganalog, nor does it have the option to include the encodinganalog attribute in its EAD export files. The MARC XML export however, seemed to properly interpret the data and corresponded with the encodinganalog as specified in the imported file.

C. Folder hierarchy

The folders’ @parent field did not import, although their folder type, number, and nesting structure did.

D. Manipulated data

In its EAD export file, Archivist Toolkit adds the text “Finding aid processed by” directly after its <author> tag. This will cause problems for any imported file which included more than the author(s) name(s) in that field and annoyance to anyone who does not want additional text in that area.
Archivist’s Toolkit removes double-spacing after periods, in deference to current rules of style and, more importantly, XML rules for data not designated as CDATA.
For note fields which did not have headers, AT added a header with the Note’s title inside a <head> tag.
Although nested <bibliography> tags are permitted in EAD, the nested tags were imported as separate Bibliography notes.

Note: The effect achieved by the sample import’s <bibliography><bibliography>list of items</bibliography></bibliography> structure, in which  contained information about the bibliography’s contents could have been achieved in AT using the Note field inside the Bibliography note entry box. The structure would have exported as <bibliography>list of items</bibliography>. But while it is possible to achieve this in AT, that would still require the importing archivist to do additional work after import.

E. Access Control

The final major data change during the the import was within <controlaccess>. The original file contained three <controlaccess> fields, which were structured as paragraphs with subject, person, and corporate names. Archivists’ Toolkit imported all the data within <subject>, <persname>, and <corpname> into the “Names and Subjects” section with @source=ingest. The data in the paragraphs was discarded.

While it is important to note all these issues and to strongly encourage archivists considering doing an import to attempt a few first and discover any major differences, the majority of the file imported without any loss of or change to the data.