After considerable discussion and time spent developing an acceptable EAD markup template for Cornell's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, we have concentrated on the direct delivery and navigation of XML finding aids and on the development of a scalable XML system that can be easily maintained. We're also working to perfect high-quality print output from the XML instances. Our goal is to create XML masters and produce all derivatives (print, web, etc.) from these.

For test material, input thus far has been from word processing files (MS Word) and HTML versions. We're using various free conversion tools: Emacs (text editor), PSGML (SGML add-on to Emacs), PS (J.Clark's SGML parser+ toolkit), and Perl. These same tools will likely be used in any large scale retrospective conversion of finding aids in electronic format. For existing paper guides, we may try outsourced re-keying, with some added codes (but not full markup, which would be done in-house). For current finding aid production, we are experimenting with strictly enforced Word templates and styles, combined with Perl scripts for conversion. As we eventually want to treat the XML files as our masters and get away from this two-step procedure, we're also hoping that more affordable and user-friendly XML authoring solutions are developed.

We're beginning to explore alternative methods of indexing and searching our on-line guides.