A project to demonstrate the benefits of using Encoded Archival Context – Corporate bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) to describe creators of manuscript collections and encode meaningful semantic links between those creators themselves and the primary sources that document their lives and work. The project will focus on lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and his circle of fellow writers, artists, political thinkers and friends, as well as collectors thereof. EAC-CPF records will describe Johnson and members of his circle; document and make navigable their relationships; and provide links to the rich Johnsonian archival resources held by the Beinecke and Houghton Libraries. The project will attempt to answer the following questions:
- How can two separate institutions (Beinecke/Yale and Houghton/Harvard) collaborate to create, share, maintain EAC-CPF records and develop a set of metadata best practices for this new archival standard?
- What is a content-rich EAC-CPF record? What contextual information and linking will be most beneficial to our users?
Proposal submitted on 10/20/2011 and amended on 11/8/2011 by:
Houghton Library, Harvard University: Susan Pyzynski, Krista Ferrante, Melanie Wisner
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University: Ellen Doon, Michael Rush
Logo image: Portrait of Samuel Johnson by Edward Francesco Burney, after Joshua Reynolds. James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.