EAD Report Card

This Web application is the first automated program for checking the quality of your EAD encoding. Created by popular demand, the tool supplements RLG's award-winning RLG Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description (pdf). Simply upload one of your finding aids for a quick checkup. The program will flag any discrepancies and cite the relevant guideline, so you can fix what you have wrong on the spot.

The EAD Report Card is available in three ways:

• An online version.
• Two standalone versions (running the application locally allows for faster testing, and the open-source code can be modified to reflect local best practices):

  Desktop version: eaddesktop1.0.zip | Readme
  Server version: eadserver1.0.zip | Readme

Who can benefit? Archivists and anyone who is creating EAD finding aids, by ensuring conformance with community-wide guidelines.

When does it come in handy? Whether or not you've already been working with the Best Practice Guidelines, this tool will help quality control and productivity. It accepts XML files encoded in EAD DTD version 2002. Use it with:

• finding aids you're currently encoding to the guidelines, to see how they stack up.
• finding aids encoded prior to the publication of the guidelines.
• documents converted for you by a vendor.
• finding aids produced using a database or other tools.
• work done by student assistants.