From owner-ead@loc.gov Tue Aug 11 12:22:41 1998 Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 10:12:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Ricky Erway <BL.RLE@RLG.ORG> Subject: Archival Resources -- a new RLG service
Dear EAD subscribers,
We think you'll be interested in trying out RLG's new finding aid access service during the free preview. Just go to http://www.rlg.org/demo/arr.html .
We are very interested in your reactions -- and if you'd like your finding aids to be included, we hope you'll let us know that, too.
Ricky Erway, RLG
bl.rle@rlg.org
Single-point, integrated access to archival collections' cataloging and full-text finding aids
Available on the Web through enhanced RLG Eureka system
Invitation to try out prior to September 1, 1998
The Research Libraries Group (RLG) would like to share information about a new online resource and invites you to look at it.
To do so, go to the RLG Web site directory at http://www.rlg.org/toc.html and click on the link under "Recent Additions." (Use www.thames.rlg.org for access from the UK and Europe; try www.ohio.rlg.org from other overseas locations.)
Archival Resources offers students, faculty, librarians, archivists, and other scholars centralized, Web-based access to significant primary sources located in repositories throughout the world. It includes cataloging of collections of archives, manuscripts, oral histories, rare books, and other difficult-to-locate materials, _plus_ a continually growing set of finding aids -- the detailed collection guides or inventories that reveal where a collection came from, how it is organized, and what it contains.
These finding aids have been converted to online form and tagged using the emerging standard for Encoded Archival Description (EAD), an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). (Steps RLG has taken to help foster adoption of the EAD standard and to foster archival research on the World Wide Web include its Finding Aids SGML Training -- FAST -- workshops for members, receipt of a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation grant supporting members' finding aids conversion efforts, and an arrangement with Apex Data Services, Inc. to provide quality text conversion and encoding of finding aids.)
Archival Resources' content currently comes from institutions in North America and the UK. Already a unique combination of information from archives, universities, and the Library of Congress, it will have additional finding aids when the service goes into production in September, with continuing additions thereafter.
The cataloging in Archival Resources comes from RLG's Archival and Mixed Collections (AMC) bibliographic file. The full-text finding aids are indexed centrally at RLG but are not necessarily stored there; some reside on an RLG server, others live on servers at contributing institutions. The newest generation of the Eureka searching interface enables users to work with both catalog records and finding aids in a single search.