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Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is a standard for encoding descriptive information regarding archival records. Archival records differ from the items in a library collection because they are unique, usually unpublished and unavailable elsewhere, and because they exist as part of a collection that unifies them. For these reasons, archival description involves a hierarchical and progressive analysis that emphasizes the intellectual structure and content of the collection and does not always extend to level of individual items within it. Following the development of technologies in the middle to late 1980’s that enabled the descriptive encoding of machine-readable findings, it became possible to consider the development of digital finding aids for archives. Work on an encoding standard for archival description began in 1992 at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1998 the first version of EAD was released. A second version was released in 2002, and the latest version, EAD3, was released in August 2015. The Society of American Archivists and the Library of Congress are jointly responsible for the maintenance and development of EAD. EAD is now used around the world by archives, libraries, museums, national libraries and historical societies. Through a standardized system for encoding the descriptions of archival finding aids, EAD allows users to locate primary sources that are geographically remote. At its highest level, an EAD finding aid includes control information about the description as well as a description of the collection itself. EAD3 was revised in 2018 to address concerns relating to the ease of access to archival descriptions and its ability to interface with other systems.

Background and Need
Archives by their very nature are different from libraries. While libraries contain individual items, such as books and journals, of which multiple, identical copies exist, archives contain records that are both unique and interrelated. Archives represent the activities of a person, family or organization that are created and accumulated naturally in the course of their ordinary activities. In contrast to the items in a library, therefore, all the items in an archival collection share a relationship. The entire body of the records of an organization, family or individual have been created and accumulated as a byproduct of the organization or individual’s existence, and therefore share a common origin, which is referred to by archivists as its provenance; provenance refers to both the origin of an item or collection as well as its custody and ownership. Archivists refer to the entire body or records of an individual or organization as its fonds; the fonds is thus a conceptual whole that reflects the process of the production or accumulation of records that share a common function or activity and exhibit a natural unity. A fonds may contain anywhere from one item to millions of items, and may consist in any form, including manuscripts, charts, drawings, maps, audio, video or electronic records.

Because published materials differ in significant and fundamental ways from the collections of interrelated and unique materials found in archives, there are significant differences in bibliographic and archival description. A bibliographic description represents an individual published item, is based on and derived from the physical item and is thus considered item-level. Archival description, by contrast represents a collection, or a fonds, often containing individual items of various media, sharing a common origin, or provenance. The description of archival materials, therefore, involves a complex hierarchical and progressive analysis. It begins by describing the whole, then moves down to subcomponents; the description frequently does not extend to the item level. In this way archival description focuses on the intellectual structure and content of the collection rather than its physical characteristics.

A finding aid is a tool that helps users to find materials within an archive through the description of its contents. Most findings aids provide similar types of information, including, at a minimum, a title that connects the finding aid to the creator of the collection; a summary of the material contained in the finding aid; background and context of the collection, including major figures involved; and information about the custody of the collection as well as any conditions or restrictions regarding its use.

The unique nature of archival records and the geographic distribution of individual collections has presented a challenge for those wishing to locate and access them for over 150 years. With the advent of international networked computing and online catalogs, however, the potential emerged for making archival collections searchable online.