EAD4 schema not coherent: <quantity> plus <unitType> vs. <dimensions> plus @unit

[vns2]

Creator of issue

Nils Meyer
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg
[email protected]

The issue relates to

• EAC-CPF schema issue
• EAC-CPF Tag Library issue
• EAD schema issue
• EAD Tag Library issue
• Schema issue
• Tag Library issue
• Suggestions for all schemas
• Suggestions for all Tag Libraries
• Other

Reporting a bug

• Text: As in EAD3, <physDescStructured> features <quantity> and <unitType> as mandatory subelements. For reasons of consistency the mandatory <unitType> should be removed and expressed via a @Unit attribute of <quantity> (as shown in the <dimensions> element). This way <quantity> and <dimensions> would have a more homogeneous composition. It is not clear why there should be two different solutions for basically the same problem: numbers + unit. Since EAD3 spread only very minimally, this change from EAD3 would presumably cause little to no problems. It should also be considered to make the @Unit attribute for <quantity> not mandatory. At least in the German archival community number + unit are usually described as a single string. As much as a more structured description is desired, a not-mandatory @Unit attribute (or a not-mandatory <unitType> element if you do not take up the suggestion above) will depict the archival practice more closely. Otherwise, institutions like the German Archives Portal or by proxy Archives Portal Europe for example will have to cope with tens of millions of empty <unitType> elements.

Suggested Solution

• Text: Preferred: Remove the mandatory <unitType> element from <physDescStructured> and introduce a non-mandatory @Unit attribute for <quantity>.
  Non preferred solution: keep the <unitType> element but make it not mandatory.

Context

• Text: For the German Digital library and German Archives Portal it is necessary to depict unstructured data delivered by currently 300 archives.

[kerstarno]

Will be discussed in more detail by TS-EAS during their meeting on 12/13 August 2024 at the SAA Annual Meeting.

[kerstarno]

Discussed at the TS-EAS meeting on 12/13 August 2024 in the context of reviewing the approach to encoding physical description information in general. This resulted in the following decisions:

• <physDescStructured> is discontinued and its sub-elements will become direct sub-elements of <identificationData>
• In this context, <quantity> will become a sub-element of <extent>, which is being re-established.
• The approach of using two sub-elements for encoding a number and a unit of measurement instead of including the latter in an attribute will be kept as it allows for more flexibility with regard to encoding of the unit of measurement (e.g. multilingual, abbreviations and full forms of a term, use of vocabulary terms and URIs).
• <unitType> will, however, be renamed to <unitOfMeasurement> (which is a consequence of a changed approach to roles and types more generally, following Reduce the number of elements: factor them by nature to make them generic #117, EAD4: appropriate subelements for <function> and <subject> #125, and Review the use of <agentRole> and <agentType> / Consider keeping @agentType as in EAC-CPF 2.0 #134).
• The content model of <dimensions> will be adapted to also use <quantity> and <unitOfMeasurement>.
• Next to <extent> and <dimensions>, <physFacet> will be moved from <physDescStructured> to <identificationData>.
• Furthermore, <genreForm> will be re-established in this context and will also become a sub-element of <identificationData> (see Maintain <genreForm> as a separate element #145).
• Like all sub-elements of <identificationData>, <extent>, <dimensions>, <genreForm>, and <physFacet> will be optional and repeatable.

[kerstarno]

The relevant changes will be addressed via #155.