Call for panelists for the EAS Section and TS-EAS joint meeting at SAA 2022

The Society of American Archivists' (SAA) Encoded Archival Standards (EAS) Section and the Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) are planning a joint meeting for the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists. The EAS / TS-EAS meeting will be held via Zoom on August 3, 2022 at 12:00 PM Eastern Time (ET).

EAS and TS-EAS are seeking representatives and users of archival aggregation websites (e.g., Archives Portal Europe, Online Archive of California, Archives Hub, ArchiveGrid, Trove, etc.) both within and outside of the United States to participate in a discussion on aggregators of archival description and resources.

Some of the questions that we will use to guide the conversation are listed below. EAS and TS-EAS adapted many of these questions from the Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) project’s reports and resources and from Archives Portal Europe’s documentation.

• Which standards and formats does the archival aggregator accept and/or utilize? Examples include EAD 2002, EAD 3, EAC-CPF, MARC, PDF, Encoded Archival Guide (EAG), HTML, txt, doc, docx, etc.
• What features and infrastructure elements does the archival aggregation service provide? Examples include hosting of content, keyword search, search engine exposure, and a contribution site for its participating institutions.
• As a contributor to or user of an archival aggregation website, what barriers have you encountered in contributing to or using the aggregation site?
• As a representative/maintainer of an archival aggregation service, what barriers have you encountered in getting contributors and/or ingesting contributions?
• How labor-intensive is the process for contributing archival description to the archival aggregation site? 
• As a contributor to an archival aggregation system, do you have concerns about inconsistent or incomplete overlaps between archival description published on your institution’s website vs. a regional aggregator site vs. a national or international aggregator site?

If you are interested in participating in the panel, please send an email to eas.section.saa@gmail.com with the following information:

• Name
• Email
• Institution
• Your role in relation to the archival aggregator(s): representative/maintainer or contributor/user?
• 1-2 sentences describing your role(s) in relation to the archival aggregator(s) you contribute to or represent.

The deadline to commit to participating in the panel is May 31, 2022.

Best,
EAS Section Steering Committee and TS-EAS