Revise content model for dates

[rockivist]

Submitted on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - 6:54am Submitted values are:

Name: Kerstin Arnold Affiliation: APEx project (Archives Portal Europe) Does this represent an official comment from your affiliated group? Yes Comment: The following represents a common comment of the APEx project responsible for
the continued development of the Archives Portal Europe, especially to the
Work Package (WP) 4 on standards and guidelines, and the "EAD" and "Authority
data" expert groups of the French Association of Standardization (AFNOR) on
the alpha release.

The content model of dates is inconsistent. Why was the EAC-CPF model not
implemented which seems quite good?

• The <date> element of <p> has the same content model as dates in the DTD.
  So, the content model of the <date> element should be homogenized with the content model of the <unitDate> and
  <unitDateStructured> elements.
• It seems that the Alpha schema includes an element which contains text
  (<unitDate>) and another element which includes standardized dates (<unitDateStructured>). However, it is
  redundant and confusing for users: the <unitDate> and <unitDateStructured> elements may coexist in the same EAD
  instance and if <unitDateStructured> is not supplied, it is not a problem! Moreover, the <unitDateStructured>
  element includes a element which may contain textual information (eg. "second half of the nineteenth
  century"), i.e. could be used identically as the <unitDate> element: What would be the difference between <unitDate era="ce" calendar="gregorian">second half of the nineteenth century</unitDate> and <unitDateStructured era="..." calendar="...">``<dateSingle>second half of the nineteenth century</dateSingle>``<unitDateStructured>? What would be the recommendation of when to use the one and when to use the
  other?
• The <unitDate> element, which is intended for data recovery, if we
  understand correctly, should therefore have the same content model as in the DTD to allow all data recovery. However, the
  <unitDate> attributes are the same as in the DTD EAD 2002, excepted the @normal attribute which was removed. How to
  retrieve standardised dates of the @normal attribute and how to transfer these to the new content model for
  dates in revised EAD? e.g.
  1. <unitdate calendar="gregorian" era="ce" normal="1945-01-01/1949-12-31">1945 – 1949</unitdate>
  2. <unitdate calendar="gregorian" era="ce" normal="1945-01-01/1949-12-31">1945, 1949</unitdate>
  3. <unitdate calendar="gregorian" era="ce" normal="1945-01-01/1949-12-31">1945, 1948 – 1949</unitdate>
  4. <unitdate calendar="gregorian" era="ce" normal="1945-01-01/1949-12-31">1945 – 1946, 1949</unitdate> would all have the same normalised date information on EAD 2002, but
     represent semantically different date information in <unitdate> itself. Accordingly, they would look rather
     different when using <unitDateStructured> (as <unitDate> doesn't allow for inclusion of normalised date information
     anymore) in new EAD. Any recommendations on how to (easily/automatically) deal with a transfer from EAD 2002 to new
     EAD with this regard?
• Whereas the <unitDate> and <dateSingle> elements both only contain textual
  information, only <unitDate> may contain formatting elements (<emph>, <lb/>) and <ref> and <title>. The
  <dateSingle> element should also contain <emph> (at least), so that we can typefor example, the superscript "e" in
  "XIXe siècle", the superscript "bre" for "decbre" (December), etc.).
• The use of <dateSingle>, <dateRange> and <dateSet> elements within
  <unitDateStructured> needs to be precised in order to <dateSet> not being redundant within <unitDateStructured>. The
  <unitDateStructured> element should only allow for a single <dateSingle> or a single <dateRange> or a single
  <dateSet>. Only when using <dateSet> it would then be possible to combine simple dates and date ranges or several date
  ranges or several simple dates.

The results of this submission may be viewed at: http://www2.archivists.org/node/17190/submission/13138

[rockivist]

From Kerstin to TS-EAD:

• What seems to be the biggest challenge, is the transferring of <unitdate> elements (with @normal) to the new content model, as <unitDate> doesn't allow for standardised date information anymore (no @normal or @standardDate attribute available) and depending on the actual date information given in the element, seemingly similar standardised dates would end up rather differently in <unitDateStructured> (either with just a <dateSingle> or a <dateRange> or with a <dateSet> including <dateSingle> followed by <dateRange> or the other way round or with a <dateSet> including several <dateSingle> or <dateRange> elements).
• In this context I also stumbled across the issue that @standardDate doesn't seem to allow for time intervals (as @normal did), but only for calendar dates either as a year, a year-month combination or a concrete day. How would one deal with intervals in format YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD (or YYYYMMDD/YYYYMMDD) when transforming EAD 2002 instances to the revised EAD? Would the month and day information be kept or would the standardised date be cut to "year only"? Would it be ` 2012 2013

  or rather

  2012 2013

  as otherwise the content ofandshould be adapted to

  01.01.2012 31.12.2013

  ` Some advice will be welcome.

[rockivist]

Closed. Addressed by #234 and #235