Creating archival descriptions in a digital environment and communicating across the Internet is not the same as traditional paper-based communication. As in other cultural domains, in archival description the medium influences the structure and content of information. The SIASFI Project and the Online Guide to the State Archives of Florence are…

The article reports the results of a usability study of an EAD interface. Findings indicate that subjects had trouble understanding archival terminology and how best to search for information in finding aids. Furthermore, they were not familiar with the structure or contents of finding aids. In addition to building interfaces that minimize…

In April 2005, the University of Maryland Libraries launched "ArchivesUM" (www.lib.umd.edu/archivesum), an online database of finding aids for manuscript and archival collections using Encoded Archival Description (EAD). "ArchivesUM," however, is only the publicly available end-product of a much larger project-an integrated…