EAD3 Gamma Release

The Technical Subcommittee for Encoded Archival Description (TS-EAD) and the Schema Development Team welcome comments on the gamma release of the EAD3 schema.  This will be the final draft release prior to the official release of EAD3 this spring.

The gamma release includes a significantly revised and improved Relax NG schema. A W3C schema version is also available for testing. New to this release is a separate schema that does not include the <relations> element, available as both Relax NG and W3C schema.  The final version of EAD will treat <relations> as an experimental element, excluding it from the official schema, but making it available in a separate, otherwise identical schema.  Also available is a Schematron schema for the validation of certain attribute values against external code lists and XSD schema documentation derived from the full W3C schema.

A migration stylesheet and DTD version of EAD3 are in development.  Although not complete nor fully tested, they may be downloaded for testing via the EAD3  development branch on GitHub.

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 versions of the EAD3 schemas, see the development branch.

The draft EAD3 Tag Library has been heavily revised since the beta release.  Note that some elements, primarily notes and controlled access elements, have not been updated since the beta release, and each of those elements is labeled as such. There is no separate documentation for attributes at this time, but many attributes are explained within the element descriptions. In addition, formatting is inconsistent, and not all entries include examples.

Documentation of all decisions made since the beta release and any outstanding issues is captured by the issue tracker on GitHub.  Explanations of significant changes since the beta release with be distributed via the EAD listserv.

All feedback is appreciated, be it bug reports, questions about new or revised elements, or general concerns. We will also appreciate you sharing any test EAD instances you create to validate against the gamma schema.  Please upload any test instances you are willing to share into the Gamma Test Instances directory on Google Drive.

If you are a GitHub user, please submit comments on the gamma EAD3 schemas as issues in the EAD Revision repository. If you are not a GitHub user, please submit your feedback via the comment form [comment form removed].

The deadline for comments on the gamma release of the EAD3 schemas is March 1, 2014. The final version is expected to be released in Spring 2014.