TARO Best Practices Guidelines 2022
The TARO Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Best Practices Guidelines 2022, Version 4.0 (EAD BPG) are designed to help users contributing EAD finding aids to the Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) database. This PDF document describes EAD encoding guidelines for TARO compliance.
The BPG reflects the Society of American Archivists’ EAD 2002 Schema Standard. The element-by-element guide features references to the EAD3 standard, but does not outline how to encode entire finding aids in EAD3.
While TARO generally supports flexibility in how different contributors create their finding aids, some elements are required to ensure the functionality of the website. Other elements and controlled vocabularies are encouraged to support search and discovery.
For help creating EAD for TARO, an XML template is available for download.
TARO Files for TARO finding aid creation
For users setting up a EAD workflow for TARO, a zip file is available with everything you’ll need to start working in your preferred XML editor. The download includes:
- TARO Best Practices Guidelines PDF
- ead.xsd — rules file for EAD, so that an XML editor can check the XML for validity
- xlink.xsd — a buddy file for ead.xsd, relating to how links (URLs) are handled in the XML
- schema2.xsl — a TARO stylesheet to be used in the XML editor for HTML preview purposes
- TARO2_EADSchemaTemplate.xml — a blank template of EAD XML (useful for filling in to create new finding aids)
- TARO2_EADSchemaTemplate.html — html version of the .xml template
- TARO2_EADExample_1.xml — an example complete EAD XML file
- TARO2_EADExample_2.xml — an example complete EAD XML file
- TARO2_EADExample_3.xml — an example complete EAD XML file
