Encoded Archival Description Tag Library, Version 2002

EAD Elements

<profiledesc> Profile Description

Description:

An optional subelement of the <eadheader> that bundles information about the creation of the encoded version of the finding aid, including the name of the agent, place, and date of encoding. The <profiledesc> element also designates the predominant and minor languages used in the finding aid.

Do not confuse with <filedesc>, which bundles such bibliographic information as the title, author, publisher, edition, and publishing series of the finding aid.

For newer finding aids, the author and encoder may be the same person or institution, but for most older finding aids, someone other than the author will be converting and encoding the document. The encoder should be listed in the <creation> subelement of <profiledesc>, while the author should be identified in the <titlestmt> subelement of <filedesc>.

Within <profiledesc> the Descriptive Rules <descrules> element can be used to specify the descriptive code or guidelines followed in creating the finding aid.

May contain:

creation, descrules, langusage

May occur within:

eadheader

Attributes:

Example:

    <eadheader audience="internal" langencoding="iso639-2b">
        <eadid>[...]</eadid>
        <filedesc>[...]</filedesc>
        <profiledesc>
            <creation>Machine-readable finding aid and skeletal markup derived via a
            macro from WordPerfect file; markup checked and completed by Sarah Taylor.
            <date normal="19950423">April 23, 1995.</date>
            </creation>
            <langusage>
                Finding aid written in <language langcode="eng">English.</language>
            </langusage>
            <descrules>Finding aid prepared using <title render="italic">Rules
            for Archival Description</title>
            </descrules> 
        </profiledesc>
    </eadheader>