Searching across EAD finding aids

From owner-ead@loc.gov Mon Jan 12 14:31:57 1998
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 15:38:19 -0500
From: Daniel Pitti <dvp4c@JEFFERSON.VILLAGE.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Searching across EAD finding aids
Sender: Encoded Archival Description List <EAD@loc.gov>
To: Multiple recipients of list EAD <EAD@RS8.LOC.GOV>

Mark,

Panorama is simply an SGML browser or viwer with searching capability within the document retrieved. To search across SGML encoded documents, you need a server with an index. At the current time, there are three of such being used by EAD sites that I know of:

ISite, a free server that can handle structured searches that use the SGML: http://vinca.cnidr.org/software/Isite/Isite.html
PAT from OpenText: http://www.opentext.com/
and DynaText/DynaWeb from INSO: http://www5.eps.inso.com/

There are others with which I am less familiar.

For EAD sites using each, see the following:

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/search/collectionguides.html Berkeley Art Museum
http://webtext.library.yale.edu/index.html Yale: uses Panorama and html for viewing
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/uc-ead/browse.html [UC Berkeley] DynaText/DynaWeb

Also see the California Heritage site at Berkeley for finding aids linked to 25,000+ images: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CalHeritage/.

For another OpenText/PAT site, see: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/ead/.

With the emergence of XML, a simplified version of SGML on the WEB, other products will surely emerge in the near future. EAD Version 1, to be released in 1998, will be XML compatible. For information on XML, see http://www.w3.org/XML/ and MicroSoft's XML page: http://www.microsoft.com/xml/.

For more information on SGML/XML commercial software: see http://www.infotek.no/sgmltool/guide.htm.

And for free SGML/XML software, see: http://www.sil.org/sgml/publicSW.html.

This should keep you busy for a while. Good luck.

Daniel