Utility Site
The Utility Site is your destination for getting ARKs, using the compliance checker and submitting your finding aids to the database. (You must be a Archives & Manuscripts Service participant with a login and password to access this site.)EAD Best Practices
- Oral History Encoding Guidelines( PDF) (Revised 2005-12-22)
Software Documentation
Software Documentation
- XMetal Documentation (Revised 2010-12)
- Oxygen Documentation (Revised 2016-03)
Helper files for use with XMetaL or Oxygen
(right click to download and save locally):
Excel-to-EAD workflow and tools for encoding container lists using an Excel template (under revision):
- Instructions
- Excel template
- Plain text replace table
Web Encoding Template (Version 2.0, 2011 September)
- Instructions (Revised 2011-09-07)
- Link to Template (Utility Site; must be a Archives & Manuscripts Service participant with login and password to access)
Additional Encoding Support
Institutional Examples & Tools
Oregon State University's Instructions for Preparing Collection-Level Finding Aids (2008-02-29)
Central Oregon Community College's Instructions for Exporting Container Lists from Access (2008-05-22)
The Utah State Archives' webcast ofInstructions for Producing Container Lists using Excel and Word mail merge (2008)
Steady, a tool from the University of North Carolina for converting CSV to EAD XML (2011 February 16)
Converting EAD Finding Aids into MARCXML:
Other Resources:
- Encoded Archival Description home page at the Library of Congress
- EADiva, an alternative version of the EAD tag library
- Describing Archives A Content Standard (DACS), 2nd edition (2013)
EAD Training
The Archives & Manuscripts Collections Service offers participating institutions training in Encoded Archival Description. The program's five-part training series offers an interactive overview of all that you need to know to create or convert finding aids so that they can go into the database: DACS basics, EAD basics, our best practices, encoding tools choices, workflows, and the many other tools that the Archives & Manuscripts Service offers. The training is a combination of recorded webinars to watch anytime and live one-hour web-based workshops. By the end of the series, you'll be ready to fully participate. The series is scheduled over a five- or six-week period. Participants will have homework assignments to complete between each workshop that require approximately one to two hours to complete.