Hello everyone,

At our library we need to import an archival collection's EAD data file
into Archivist Toolkit v2.0. The first need is that we want to avoid having
to write up the EAD file completely by hand. Therefore we want to first
input the collection's data into a CSV file, Excel, or similar tool. The
second need is that we want to end up with an EAD file that Archivist
Toolkit v2.0's builtin EAD XML schema will accept.

Previously we have tried using EADMachine[1], which is currently not being
actively maintained, and at the time we had some schema issues when
importing the resulting EAD file into Archivist Toolkit. For all I know it
may have been our fault that we could not get it to work. I have not yet
looked at the successor of EADmachine called asInventory[2], which is meant
for use with Archives Space. Right now I am looking at the "Yale Archival
Management Systems Committee: Excel to EAD"[3] solution, but I am also
having issues with converting the data we put in their pre-formatted Excel
file into an EAD file. In this case we had a good chunk of data not carried
over to the exported EAD file. Again, we may be doing something wrong, for
example we currently are stuck with using Excel's XML Spreadsheet 2004
file format and not the Yale required/suggested Excel 2003 XML format.

Therefore, I was wondering what others are doing out there for
programmatically creating EAD files from delimited data, and then import
into Archivist Toolkit. Perhaps many of you are just using some of the
tools above without issues. I can keep trying to make them work, but any
tips are welcome.

Alternatively, I can try to write something in Python/PHP/Perl to at least
programmatically batch create parts of the EAD XML from the collection's
data we have in delimited files, then stitch it together with EAD XML
content that we write by hand.

Thanks in advance,
Yamil

[1] https://github.com/gwiedeman/eadmachine
[2] https://github.com/UAlbanyArchives/asInventory
[3] https://github.com/UAlbanyArchives/asInventory



--------------------------------

Yamil Suarez, MCS
Associate Director of Library Systems & Web Development

Stan Getz Library
Berklee College of Music
1140 Boylston St
Boston, MA 02215

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617-747-2617

pronouns: he/his/him