Overview of EAD pages

For an alphabetical list of elements, see the alphabetical elements page.

* = required, ** = one of this group is required.

Top-Level

<ead>*

Main Wrappers

Control Elements

These are unique child elements of <control> and their child elements. In some cases, a generic element such as <p> may be used, but if a tag may not contain anything unique to control (e.g. nested within <p> within <editionstmt>) then its child elements will not be listed.

All direct children of control are in required order. If order is required in any of the nested elements, that order will be reflected in the list but not noted. If an optional item may be repeated, it will be noted, no note indicates that it may only be used once. To be safe and clearer, view individual element pages.

Archdesc Elements

Access Elements

Access elements must contain and may only contain <part> elements. The one exception is <geogname> which may also contain <geographiccoordinates> after all parts (but it still must contain at least one <part>).

Date Elements

Date elements have expanded beyond just <date>. The new elements allow for a greater degree of specificity. Which type of element may be used in a situation depends on the parent element.

Linking Elements

Most of the linking elements in EAD 2002 were removed. We are left with:

as generic linking elements.

may be used to link to a digital archival object.

may be used to link to a representation of the archival finding aid.

is a mandatory element when citing conventions used to create the finding aid and may link to those conventions.

may link to elements that are respectively related to the material or sources from which description was drawn.

List Elements

List elements are fairly consistent except for the addition of <chronitemset> which allows for more flexibility in chronological lists. Because of the differences in what’s allowed in a list and and a definition list (one where @listtype is set to “deflist”), I’m doing a separate version for each.

For any non-deflist:

Deflist:

Chronlist:

Super-Generic Elements

These elements are quite generic and may be used within a variety of elements. Some may be used in most elements, others only in many. Many may contain each other, although only one truly dependent relationship is expressed below.