EAD Finding Aids With Internal Cross References (Internal Links)

I am currently working on an EAD finding aid for part of our New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) collection which is arranged alphabetically by subjects. This finding aid includes of number of “See also:” and “See Instead:” references. I made these into internal references so that researchers could click on them and go directly to the folder title referenced, rather than scroll through the folder list for 73 record center boxes.

The internal link consists of two parts: the reference and the target. First I needed to establish the targets, the folder titles where the link takes you, by giving each target folder title a unique identifier as the value for the “id” attribute in the unittitle tag.

<did>
            <container type="box">1</container>
            <container type="folder">27</container>

            <unittitle id="link1-27">Academic Standards</unittitle>

            <unitdate type="inclusive" normal="1982/1983">1982-1983</unitdate>
</did>


The id must start with a letter character, not a number. My convention is to use the word “link” followed by the box number, dash, folder number.

Then the reference can be pointed to the target.

<did>
            <container type="box">10</container>
            <container type="folder">22</container>
            <unittitle id="link10-22">Curriculum Mandates (folder 1)<lb/>
                        <emph render="italic">See also:

                        <ref linktype="simple" target="link1-27" show="replace" actuate="onrequest">Academic Standards<lb/>
                        </ref></emph>
            </unittitle>
            <unitdate type="inclusive" normal="1976/1977">1976-1977</unitdate>
</did>

Now the Curriculum Mandates folder is also set as a target, so I can reference back to it from the Academic Standards folder:

<did>
            <container type="box">1</container>
            <container type="folder">27</container>

            <unittitle id="link1-27">Academic Standards<lb/>

                        <emph render="italic">See also:

                        <ref linktype="simple" target="link10-22" show="replace" actuate="onrequest"> Curriculum Mandates <lb/>
                        </ref></emph>
            </unittitle>

            <unitdate type="inclusive" normal="1982/1983">1982-1983</unitdate>
</did>

 

Now a research looking at the description of the Academic Standards folder can see the reference for Curriculum Mandates, jump directly to the description of the Curriculum Standards folder, and then right back to Academic Standards.