[Archivesspace_Users_Group] TEI data and ArchivesSpace

Andrew Morrison andrew.morrison at bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Mon Sep 27 05:56:03 EDT 2021


I'd recommend converting to EAD first, then importing that. TEI is a 
highly flexible and customizable schema, so writing a direct importer 
would be difficult, and unlikely to work for all the different styles 
and standards of TEI created by different projects. In some cases, it 
might require pulling together bits of information from different parts 
of the TEI document, which would be almost impossible with the SAX 
parser <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_API_for_XML> used by 
ArchivesSpace's importer.

Also each TEI document would have to correspond one-to-one with 
something which you would want to become a resource in ArchivesSpace. If 
that is the case, I'd still convert to EAD first, using XSLT. If instead 
you've got lots of TEI files, each representing individual items in a 
collection, then XQuery would be my choice to build one EAD file from 
multiple source TEI files. But any programming language with a DOM 
parser library could do it.

Whatever tools you use, the intermediate step of converting to EAD, 
which you can then validate, should find most of the data issues, and in 
bulk, whereas the importer fails on each problem, and has to be re-run 
to find the next one.

The TEI and EAD catalogues here exist side-by-side. Originally they 
covered different eras and specialisms, but a recent summary catalogue 
conversion project 
<https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2019/11/29/a-new-project-in-archives-and-modern-manuscripts-the-conversion-of-the-bodleians-summary-catalogue-of-western-manuscripts/> 
has greatly increased the overlap. The plan is to link them together 
using ARKs.

Andrew.


On 23/09/2021 12:26, Natalie Adams wrote:
>
> Good afternoon everyone,
>
> I’ve been looking at the TEI data we have about some of our 
> collections and I wondered whether anyone on the list has experience 
> or resources to share about TEI.
>
> I’d be interested in information about importing TEI data (or a subset 
> of TEI data) into ArchivesSpace- either directly or by converting into 
> one of the formats that can be ingested into ArchivesSpace. Also in 
> information/experience of maintaining TEI metadata and ArchivesSpace 
> metadata that are describing the same materials.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Natalie
>
> *Natalie Adams, FARA*
>
> Metadata Specialist
>
> Cambridge University Library
>
> West Road
>
> Cambridge
>
> Cambridge, CB3 9DR
>
> Tel 01223 766377
>
> www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ <http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/>
>
>
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