EAD Beta Schema Released - Comments Welcome

The Technical Subcommittee for Encoded Archival Description (TS-EAD) and the Schema Development Team welcome comments on the beta release of the revised EAD schema.

The beta release is a completely re-written Relax NG schema. A W3C schema version is also available for testing. This version addresses most of the feedback received during the alpha comment period. A few unresolved issues remain, all of which can be reviewed on the project's GitHub repository issue tracker.

The schema versions listed above will remain stable in the master branch of the EAD Revision GitHub repository until the final release. To check on the most up-to-date version of the revised schema, see the development branch.

A preliminary draft of the updated EAD Tag Library is available in two PDFs, one for Elements and one for Attributes. The PDFs will remain static throughout the Beta comment period, but the editorial process will continue. The latest versions are available in Google Docs: see Elements and Attributes. Documentation of all decisions made since the alpha release is best captured by the closed issues on GitHub.

A migration stylesheet and DTD version will be shared with the community as soon as possible, as well as documentation explaining all changes made to the schema.

All feedback is appreciated, be it bug reports, questions about new or revised elements, or general concerns. TS-EAD will particularly appreciate comments on the structure and potential use of the <relations> element as implemented in the beta.  We will also appreciate you sharing any test EAD instances you create to validate against the beta schema.  Please upload any test instances you are willing to share into the Beta Test Instances directory on Google Drive.

If you are a GitHub user, please submit comments on the beta schema as issues in the EAD Revision repository. If you are not a GitHub user, please submit your feedback via the comment form.

The deadline for comments on the beta version of the revised EAD schema is October 1, 2013. The final version is expected to be released early in Winter 2014.