What is a finding aid?

A finding aid is a description of an archival collection that provides information about the history and significance of the collection, the types of materials in the collection, information about use and availability of the collection, and is often a guide to where things are within the collection.

What is EAD and where can I find out more about EAD?

The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Document Type Definition (DTD) is a standard for encoding archival finding aids using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). You can find out more about EAD at the Library of Congress Encoded Archival Description Official Web Site and the EAD Round Table of the Society of American Archivists EAD Help Pages.

How are finding aids converted to EAD?

As either part-time employees or interns, students studying archives at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences provide the labor for converting the finding aids. At the same time that students acquire valuable experience in EAD, the Historic Pittsburgh project benefits from the addition of finding aids. Most of the finding aids are received as either Word or Word Perfect files. Information is transferred from the original finding aid into the encoded version using a template developed by archives staff. NT Emacs is currently used with Psgml for the encoding software. In some cases, portions of the container lists are able to be automatically encoded using Perl scripts modified to the particular collection. This automation greatly speeds the encoding process.

How are the collections made accessible on the Web?

The Finding Aids collection is indexed using the XPAT SGML-aware search engine. When a user enters a query into our seach form, the query is then sent to a CGI script (a component of DLXS "middleware" that retrieves the information from the XPAT index and then transforms the results to display them in HTML, which is delivered back to the user's web browser.

Future plans

As the Finding Aids database grows, users will be able to find archival descriptions for collections housed in the Archives Service Center, Special Collections, the Darlington Memorial Library of the University Library System, and the Library & Archives at the History Center. These respositories hold over 1,000 archival collections, many of them closely related to the history of the Pittsburgh region.

For more information

For information about the collections, please contact the following repositories:

Library & Archives of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania at the History Center (library@hswp.org)

Archives Service Center of the University Library System (archives-ref@library.pitt.edu)

Special Collections of the University Library System (cea@pitt.edu)

For more information about the encoding and technical implementation of this project contact:

Digital Research Library of the University Library System (drl-uls@library.pitt.edu).

Contact Us with feedback and questions.
Historic Pittsburgh is hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library.