1. Providing Online Access to the HKUST University Archives: EAD to INNOPAC
7th Annual Hong Kong Innovative
Users Group Meeting
11-12 December 2006
Sintra Tsang and K.T. Lam
The Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology

2. Outline Part I Part II HKUST University Archives
Access to University Archives
Part II
EAD Project
EAD2III

3. Part I. University Archives
HKUST University Archives
Mandate
The Formation Years
Retention Guidelines
Repository
Organization
Access to University Archives
Digital University Archives
Finding Aids
Bibliographic Records

4. HKUST University Archives – Mandate
To collect and preserve “legally important” and “historically valuable” materials including official papers, publications and agreements; internal planning documents; and major committee reports for the entire university community.

5. HKUST University Archives – The Formation Years
Mandate from the Founding President
Established in 1996
50+ visits and record surveys were conducted in the first year
Acquired 100+ linear feet of materials

6. HKUST University Archives – Retention Guidelines

7. HKUST University Archives – Retention Guidelines

8. HKUST University Archives – Repository
600+ linear feet (200 book shelves) of materials
Administration records, agreements, floor plans, etc.
Artifacts: architectural model
University publications
35,000 photos and slides

9. HKUST University Archives – Organization
60+ Record Groups and subgroups

10. HKUST University Archives – Organization

11. Access to University Archives
Digital University Archives
PDF file of Individual document
Finding Aid / Archival Inventory
A document describing the materials in a record group or subgroup
Catalog Record
Bibliographic record of individual record group or subgroup

12. Access to University Archives – Digital University Archives
Scope
Database structure
Highlights
Impacts

13. Digital University Archives -- Scope
Crucial administrative documents, e.g.
Senate meeting records
Committee / Task Force records
Publications
Newsletters
Academic calendar
Congregation program
Press releases
Etc.

14. Digital University Archives -- Database Structure
Document title
Record group / series / folder
Originating office
Event date
Project investigator
Keywords
Access group and level

15. Digital University Archives -- Highlights
18,400 documents in 136 record series
Access control on restricted documents
Substantial customization to accommodate authentication
Provide staff, administrators and alumni convenient access to administrative documents and publications
Full-text
Chinese and English search
Internet access

16. Digital University Archives -- Impacts
Positive feedbacks
Centralized database for all offices & departments
Eliminate duplicate effort in building individual database for administrative records
Encourage cooperation
Being recognized

17. HKUST University Archives – Organization

18. Access to University Archives – Finding Aid
A document describing a group of records originating from the same functional unit
Descriptive standard: Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)
Encoding standard: Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

19. Access to University Archives – Encoded Finding Aid

20. Access to University Archives – Catalog Record
AACR Ch. 4
Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts : A Cataloging Manual (APPM)

21. A mapping from DACS elements to EAD tags and MARC21 tags
Source:

22. A comparison of APPM, MARC, DACS and EAD
e.g. Physical description area
Descriptive standard
Encoding standard
Catalog record
APPM B1
Textual materials: linear feet
Electronic records: 6.3 megabytes
MARC -- tag 300
|3Textual materials: |a16.21 |flinear feet
|3Electronic records: |a6.3 |fmegabytes
Finding aid
DACS
16.21 linear feet of textual materials, 6.3 megabytes of electronic records
EAD -- <extent>
<extent>16.21 linear feet</extent> of <genreform>textual materials, </genreform>
<extent>6.3 megabytes</extent> of <genreform>electronic records</genreform>

23. Access to University Archives – Summary
600+ linear feet of archival materials from 60+ offices

24. Part II. EAD and EAD2III EAD Project EAD2III
Authoring Finding Aids in EAD XML schema
Publishing them to the Web
EAD2III
Web-based application to automatically loading bibliographic data in EAD XML files to INNOPAC

25. EAD Project
Before University Archives Findings Aids were created and maintained as static web pages
No standardization on metadata schema
No standardization on content description
Not interchangeable with other systems, such as Library Catalog

26. EAD Project [2]
Mid Systems and Archives staff began to evaluate the feasibility of using EAD’s XML-based schema to encode our finding aids
We evaluated:
EAD Cookbook 2002 for authoring and publishing finding aids [
XMetaL and NoteTab Pro for creating and editing XML files

27. EAD Project [3]
January 2005 – Migrated the authoring and web publishing of University Archives Finding Aids to the EAD environment
Based on software library and tools provided by the EAD Cookbook 2002, with local customization on its XSLT files
Purchased NoteTab Pro software for use by Archives staff

28. EAD Cookbook 2002 Library as seen in NoteTab Pro software - Note the EAD XML file in the editing window

29. EAD Project [4] EAD Cookbook 2002 with NoteTab Pro:
Create or open an EAD XML file for editing
Parse and validate the XML file
Transform the XML file to HTML format
Post the HTML version of the Finding Aids to web server
Example of transformation:
HTML version
XML version

30. EAD Project [5]
The customized versions of the XSLT files are available for download from HKUST Library’s Resource Sharing Pool

31. EAD2III
Bibliographic records are created on INNOPAC for each Record Groups in the University Archives
This cataloging effort is duplicating, because the bibliographic data is ready available in the EAD XML files created for the Finding Aids
In need of a program to automate the loading of EAD bibliographic data to INNOPAC

32. EAD2III [2] EAD2III was developed in November 2006 to serve the need
It is a web-based application that allows Archives staff to automatically:
extract the bibliographic data from an EAD XML file;
convert it into MARC (ISO 2709) format; and
load the MARC data stream to INNOPAC, via the “OCLC to INNOPAC Interactive Interface”

36. EAD2III [3]
Interactive loading of record to INNOPAC is based on a technique we developed in 2003 for our Name Access Control Repository Project [
There was need to interactively convert a NAC record to authority record in MARC format and automatically load it to INNOPAC
EAD2III is Java-based, with Tomcat as servlet container, and XSLT

37. EAD2III [4] EAD2III Demonstration
Will turn EAD2III into open source software and make it available in the HKUST Library Resource Sharing Pool, if others are interested in
We will use EAD2III framework to create yet another project for interactively loading bibliographic records obtained from external sources to INNOPAC. Stay tuned.

38. Thank You!