Help Pages - Mission Statement & Background

The EAD Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists is intended to promote the implementation and use of the EAD.DTD (Encoded Archival Description Document Type Definition) for dissemination of archival information. To this end, we aim to put persons in touch with appropriate information concerning converting existing archival finding aids to EAD format, use of software for markup, parsing, indexing, and document delivery, and the current status of EAD development.

Since the first experimental work was done in the mid-1990s on what is now known as EAD, archivists, librarians, and systems administrators have shared information via a number of methods. First, there was an informal email network, which developed into the EAD Electronic List in March 1996. Soon after, the Library of Congress began to serve as a clearinghouse for EAD information and as a repository of EAD source files and related files (mainly helper files for commercial products used with EAD). The need for a group to handle the more informal aspects of EAD implementation was addressed in late 1997, when a petition to the Council of the Society of American Archivists was met with their approval to found the EAD Roundtable. On September 4, 1998, at the SAA Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, the Roundtable was officially inaugurated.

The principal function of the Roundtable, to promote the use of EAD by helping implementors find useful information, will be served by the EAD HELP PAGES website. The presence of the website will change the focus of the Library of Congress EAD website. LC will serve principally as a repository for EAD source files and will maintain an official list of EAD implementors. The EAD HELP PAGES will take over the responsibility of maintaining an FTP site for commercial product helper files.

1999 meeting in Pittsburgh, PA

2000 meeting in Denver, CO

2001 Meeting in Washington, DC

2005 Meeting in New Orleans, LA