We have had computerized finding aids since 1983 maintained in a database system which we developed ourselves. Early in 1994 we made public finding aids available via the World Wide Web as HTML files with a facility to search our databases interactively. Before the development of EAD we put paper finding aids into our database system. Since we have been using EAD, we have done some scanning and optical character recognition of finding aids that had not been previously included in the database system. We experimented with various specialized tools available (the usual suspects) but ultimately preferred to use plain text editors, macros, and programs we developed ourselves, along with freely available parsing software. EAD Javascript: http://classic.archives.nd.edu/ead/ead.htm EAD control Javascript: http://classic.archives.nd.edu/ead/dsc.htm Eadit - Java applet: http://classic.archives.nd.edu/ead/

The Javascripts seem to work better with a greater variety of computers and browsers than the Java applet. They are also easier to modify, since the source code is always available to make changes appropriate for different repositories with their different policies. We wrote programs to automate most of the markup of finding aids we had in our database system. We use James Clark's NSGMLS and his other programs to parse EAD finding aids. We have also used Larry Robertson's SP Wizard as an means of invoking NSGMLS and fixing mistakes and Eric G.V. Fookes' NoteTab for markup, invoking the parser, and fixing mistakes. We have found all of this (free) software to be excellent -- highly reliable and easy to use. James Clark: http://www.jclark.com/sp/ SP Wizard: http://www.eccnet.com/sgmlug/spwizard/ NoteTab: http://www.notetab.com/

Presently we use programs we wrote ourselves to index every word in the finding aids and make them searchable via the Internet. We expect to keep improving our indexing system, which is presently only a little better than what we had before EAD.