Updating
descriptions

How to update your descriptions on the Archives Hub

Once you’ve contributed descriptions to the Hub, it is possible to update them later if you need to. You may have some new information about the collection, want to add a new component, or a digital object – or just correct a typo!

You can make most changes in the EAD Editor. The exceptions to this are:

For all other changes, you can use the EAD Editor. If you don’t have an EAD Editor login, contact us, and we’ll set one up for you.

If you have consistent changes to make across a number of descriptions (such as changing your email address or access conditions), contact us, and we may be able to make these changes for you.

To edit your descriptions using the EAD Editor

  1. Upload a copy of the description to the EAD Editor.  If you keep local copies of your EAD, you can upload and start editing immediately.  If you haven’t got a local copy, you can either:
    • Download the EAD from the Archives Hub
    • Email us, telling us which descriptions (name and reference) you would like to change. We will email you the requested files, for you to upload to the Editor.
  2. To upload your EAD files, login to the EAD Editor, and click on ‘choose file’ from the ‘edit’ section in the left-hand pane.  Navigate to the file you want to upload, and click ‘open’.  Please note that there is currently no facility for bulk uploads to the EAD Editor; you will need to upload each description individually.
  3. Once you’ve made the required changes, you can resubmit the description to the Hub by clicking ‘send to the Hub team’.  Please put a note in the box to indicate that this is a resubmission of an existing description.  You may wish to save a copy of your updated EAD.

PLEASE NOTE that the existing description will be entirely over-written by the new description you submit.

To download EAD from the Archives Hub

You can view and download descriptions from the Archives Hub in EAD xml. Please use the Hub-specific version of EAD if you intend to upload the description to the Hub or the EAD Editor. We also have instructions on viewing Hub descriptions in different formats. 

To view a description EAD

The URL for EAD descriptions is in the format:

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/[persistent ID].xml

eg:
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb133-lsp.xml
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb418-palmer.xml
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb006-rulms1416.xml

The easiest way to view this is to click the 'view XML' link in the blue utility bar at the top of each description. This link will give you interoperable EAD, which conforms to international standards.

The Archives Hub also uses a slightly adapted version of EAD, including special mark up around access points. Please use this version of the EAD if you intend to upload a file to the EAD Editor. To get this version of the EAD, add ?hub to the end of the XML URL:

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/[persistent ID].xml?hub

eg:
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb133-lsp.xml?hub
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb418-palmer.xml?hub
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb006-rulms1416.xml?hub

To download/save a description as EAD

Once you’ve found the EAD for the description you’re interested in, you can save a copy as EAD by saving the webpage as an xml document.

The exact method for this will depend on the browser you’re using. We’ve given instructions below for the most recent versions of the most common browsers.

Internet Explorer 9

Click the ‘tools’ icon (small gear) in the top right of the screen. Choose ‘file’ and ‘save as’. Ensure that you save the file as type ‘XML files’.

Firefox v 5

Right-click somewhere in the main body of the page (or open the file menu), and chose ‘save page as’ from the right-click menu.  Make sure you chose save as type ‘web page, XML only’.

Chrome v 12

Right-click somewhere in the main body of the page, and chose ‘save as’ from the right-click menu.  Save as type ‘XML document’

Uploading

If the EAD Editor rejects the file, you will need to make one change to it.  Open the EAD file in an editing program. You can use XML editing software, or a text editing program such as notepad or wordpad (we don’t recommend editing XML in Microsoft Word)

The very first line in the document will be:

<ead xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/ead">

You will need to remove everything except <ead> - delete xmlns=http://www.loc.gov/ead.

Save the file.  The file can then be uploaded to the EAD Editor as usual.

This fix will not be required with the next release of the EAD Editor.

You may also be interested in our information on:

 

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