Overview

The Archives & Manuscripts Collections Service offers participating institutions training in Encoded Archival Description. The program’s five-part training series offers an interactive overview of all that you need to know to create or convert finding aids so that they can go into the database: DACS basics, EAD basics, our best practices, encoding tools choices, workflows, and the many other tools that the Archives & Manuscripts Service offers. The training is a combination of recorded webinars to watch anytime and live one-hour web-based workshops. By the end of the series, you’ll be ready to fully participate. The series is scheduled over a five- or six-week period. Participants will have homework assignments to complete between each workshop that require approximately one to two hours to complete.

Scheduling

The webinar series is offered at least once a year. The series may be presented more often on request or as needed for projects, new members, and other circumstances. Please contact Alliance staff to schedule training.

Instructions for Participants

Webinar attendance requires a wired Internet connection and either a computer with speakers and microphone on a headset or a telephone headset. Attendees must be able to engage in two-way communication with the instructor and other participants; the training is not a broadcast.

The webinars are hosted by GoToWebinar, a service to which the Alliance subscribes. The first time you join a webinar, the service will install a small piece of software on your computer, so plan to join about ten minutes early to finish this process well ahead of time.

Ground Rules

Participants are asked to abide by the following ground rules:

• Participate actively. You’ll get more out of the session!
• We will mute your phone during the presentations and open the lines during the QA sessions. You can submit questions via chat (use the CHAT feature, not the QUESTION feature) any time. I will be ready to receive your questions.
• If you are experiencing technical problems or want to raise a concern about the webinar, please use the chat feature to contact me.
• To stimulate discussion, I may call on people at random.
• Please complete the homework assignments between sessions. They are not time consuming and will help you get more out of this experience.
• Please focus on the webinar; don”t check email or do other work during the webinar.

Workshop Details

• Workshop 1: DACS Basics
• Workshop 2: Collection-Level Description
• Workshop 3: Component-Level Description
• Workshop 4: Encoding
• Workshop 5: Encoding Workflows

Supporting Materials

• EAD Tag Library
• Describing Archives: A Content Standard
• DACS Required Elements handout
• EAD Best Practices Guidelines (BPG)
• EAD Required Elements handout
• EAD Required Elements and Attributes handout
• Guide to the Carita Smith Papers
• Encoding Decisions Flowchart
  • Part 1: Initial Decision-Making
  • Part 2: Producing a Collection-Level Finding Aid Using Encoding Software and Encoding Template
  • Part 3: Producing a Fully Detailed Finding Aid Using Encoding Software and Encoding Template
  • Part 4: Producing a Fully Detailed Finding Aid Using Encoding Software and Excel Output
  • Part 5: Producing a Collection-Level or Fully Detailed Finding Aid Using Archivist’s Toolkit or ArchivesSpace

Recorded Webinars

The recorded webinars are available to view anytime according to your needs, or can be used in sequence to support attendance of the five-part workshop series.

Watch for Workshop 1:

• DACS Basics

Watch for Workshop 2:

• EAD Overview
• EAD Best Practices Overview
• Minimum Framework

Watch for Workshop 3:

• Component Level Description

Watch for Workshop 4:

• ARK Request
• Compliance Checker
• Document Submission
• Encoding Software
• Revision and Re-Submission
• Repository Registry

Watch for Workshop 5:

• Archivist’s Toolkit Output

Watch Anytime:

• EAD Best Practices 3.8 Overview
• Digital Object Linking
• XML View