This set of guidelines, the second version promulgated by RLG, was developed between October 2001 and August 2002 by the RLG EAD Advisory Group. This group consisted of ten archivists and digital content managers experienced in creating and managing EAD-encoded finding aids at repositories in the United States and the United Kingdom. The objectives of the guidelines are: to facilitate interoperability of resource discovery by imposing a basic degree of uniformity on the creation of valid EAD-encoded documents and to encourage the inclusion of elements most useful for retrieval in a union index and for display in an integrated (cross-institutional) setting; to offer researchers the full benefits of XML in retrieval and display by developing a set of core data elements to improve resource discovery. It is hoped that by identifying core elements and by specifying “best practice” for those elements, these guidelines will be valuable to those who create finding aids, as well as to vendors and tool builders; and to contribute to the evolution of the EAD standard by articulating a set of best practice guidelines suitable for inter-institutional and international use. These guidelines can be applied to both retrospective conversion of legacy finding aids and the creation of new finding aids.
