In the Mandeville Special Collections Library, description of manuscripts and archival records is first entered into an in-house database application created with Microsoft's FoxPro 2.6 for Windows. Once the quality and integrity of the description is assured, the description is output, using pertinent database report forms, in the form of a printed finding aid or a digital finding aid in EAD, HTML, and ASCII modes.  The EAD output is validated using a parser designed by Alvin Pollock of the Text Encoding Unit at UC, .  It is then mounted onto a UCSD Libraries server as well as a California Digital Libraries server.  Once mounted on the UCSD Libraries server, the database of EAD finding aids is indexed using the Verity Query Software.  The parameters for this indexing are established by systems staff in accordance with the wishes of MSCL staff, but the process itself is done as part of the output process. Construction and use of the MSCL finding aids database relies on five software packages: A) 

A processing database application created from Microsoft's FoxPro 2.6 for Windows.  This application allows us to normalize finding aid structure and to output simultaneously three modes of digital finding aids.  It allows all of the encoding (EAD & HTML) and text formatting (paper and ASCII) to be predefined and executed automatically.  That means the generation of particular instances can be done more quickly and, if desirable, at a lower level staff. B)  EAD parser designed as part of the UC-EAD project. Every newly generated EAD instance is validated with the parser before being mounted on the server. C)  Verity Query Language used to index the EAD finding aids database and allow for cross collection searching. D)  Softquad's Panorama (or some parallel) that allows the client to access the native ead files. E)  An HTML browser which allows the client to access the HTML files.