What is Encoded Archival Description (EAD)?
EAD is a standard for the encoding of archival finding-aids. It was originally devised between 1993 and 1995 at the University of California at Berkeley, but is now maintained by the US Library of Congress in conjunction with the Society of American Archivists. EAD was originally based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), but with the subsequent development of Extensible Markup Language (XML) it has been made fully XML compliant. It is widely used both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. The EAD standard is represented as an XML document type definition (or DTD). It can be obtained free of charge from the EAD official web site , which also provides background information on EAD, an overview of its structure and guidelines for its implementation. Further web-sites and print publications giving information about EAD are listed on the LEADERS references page.
