APS Library Posts EAD Finding Aids to Web

The American Philosophical Society Library has recently completed the encoding of 35 manuscript collection finding aids, using Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and made them available on the Society's web site at www.amphilsoc.org/library/eadfiles.htm. EAD is an emerging standard for the delivery of finding aids in an electronic environment.

These finding aids include some of the Library's most prominent collections in the areas of history of science, genetics, anthropology, and American history. Among the finding aids currently posted are the American Eugenics Society Records, the Joseph Priestley Papers, the Caspar Wistar Papers, and the papers of two Nobel laureates, geneticist Barbara McClintock and molecular biologist Salvador Luria. The finding aids are also linked through the Library's new Mole: The Manuscripts On-line Guide, which compliments the printed manuscript guides and the Library's On-line Public Access Catalog (OPAC) that became available in 1999 (opac.amphilsoc.org). It is the goal of the Library to make all of its finding aids publicly available in electronic form.