<did> Descriptive Identification

<did> is the only required element in <archdesc> and <c> (or <c01>, etc.). It is used to bundle other elements identifying core information about the described materials. These elements should constitute a good basic description of the archival unit. The <did> in <archdesc> is called a high-level <did>. The <did> within <c>-type elements is referred to as a low-level <did>. These terms may be used when discussing levels of description.

<did> can only be used in <archdesc>, <c>, and <c01>, <c02>, … , <c12>.

Attributes

  • @altrender – not required. Use if the content of the element should be displayed or printed differently than the rendering established in a style sheet for other occurrences of the element.
  • @audience – not required. Use to set whether the element’s contents will be visible to external users or to internal ones. Possible values are: “internal” and “external.”
  • @encodinganalog – not required. May contain information to map this tag to a particular element in another schema.
  • @id – not required. Creates an ID for element. Can be used for linking.
  • @lang – not required. Three-letter code that indicates the language in which the element’s contents were written. It should come from ISO 639-2b.
  • @script – not required. Four-letter code that indicates the script in which the element’s contents were written. It should come from ISO 15924.

Child Elements

Because it must be used within <archdesc> and <c>, which have different needs, there are no required child elements inside <did>.

<did> may contain an optional <head> element. It must contain one or more of the following: <abstract>, <container> (which is not used in high level <did>), <dao>, <daoset>, <didnote>, <langmaterial>, <materialspec>, <origination>, <physdescset>, <physdesc>, <physdescstructured>, <physloc>, <repository>, <unitdate>, <unitdatestructured>, <unitid>, and <unittitle>.

Examples

This is a <c>-level <did>.

<did>
  <unittitle>Department Minutes</unittitle>
  <unitdatestructured unitdatetype="inclusive">
    <dateset>
      <daterange>
        <fromdate standarddate="1978">1978</fromdate>
        <todate standarddate="1982">1983</todate>
      </daterange>
      <datesingle standarddate="1985">1985</datesingle>
      <daterange>
        <fromdate standarddate="1987">1987</fromdate>
        <todate standarddate="2020">2020</todate>
      </daterange>
    </dateset>
  </unitdatestructured>
  <container containerid="9095822543098" localtype="box">1</container>
  <container containerid="9095822543099" localtype="box">2</container>
  <container containerid="9095822543100" localtype="box">3</container>
  <container containerid="9095822543101" localtype="box">4</container>
  <container containerid="9095822543102" localtype="box">5</container>
  <container containerid="9095822543103" localtype="box">6</container>
  <physdescset parallel="false" coverage="whole">
    <physdescstructured coverage="part" physdescstructuredtype="carrier">
      <quantity>6</quantity>
      <unittype>boxes</unittype>
    </physdescstructured>
    <physdescstructured coverage="part" physdescstructuredtype="materialtype">
      <quantity>143</quantity>
      <unittype>electronic files</unittype>
    </physdescstructured>
  </physdescset>
  <abstract>Regular department meetings are held in September-December and February-April of each school year. Some years include minutes of additional meetings. Minutes for the years 1983 and 1986 were not retained by anyone in the department.</abstract>
</did>
  <did>
    <unittitle>Grants</unittitle>
    <unitdatestructured unitdatetype="inclusive">
      <daterange>
        <fromdate standarddate="1978">1978</fromdate>
      </daterange>
    </unitdatestructured>
    <physdescstructured coverage="whole" physdescstructuredtype="carrier">
      <quantity>17</quantity>
      <unittype>boxes</unittype>
    </physdescstructured>   
  </did>

Changes from EAD 2002

<did> gained attributes @lang and @script. Deprecated element <daogrp> was replaced by <daoset> and deprecated <note> by <didnote>. It gained new elements <physdescset>, <physdescstructured>, and <unitdatestructured>.

EAD3 Tag Library Entry

View the official tag library entry for <did>