The Combined Use of EAD and METS for Archival Material

Abstract

Information professionals have at their disposal a complex ecosystem of standards and tools designed with specific focus by different user groups. In the case of the Cultural Heritage projects, there are different metadata schemas aimed to support the efficient creation, storage and distribution of content and digital assets. But the use of these metadata schemas, and the software tools that make their use and deployment possible, are sometimes restricted to well-limited areas. As an example, the EAD schema is widely used by archivists for describing fonds and records, TEI is mainly applied for encoding textual corpus, and METS is bounded to the digitization of ancient books. A major permeability and reuse of metadata schemas and tools in different contexts is needed, as information professionals and user communities can leverage their capability to exchange and disseminate assets, gain independence from proprietary software solutions and platforms and make possible an unlimited, global access to our communities’ Cultural Heritage. This paper describes the development of a technical solution that integrates the use of EAD with METS for the digitization and description of archival records. With the proposed solution archivists obtain the benefits of both standards using a common, integrated process and tools.