EAC-CPF

EAC-CPF
Name	EAC-CPF
Abbreviation	EAC-CPF
Domain	Archival description
Developed by	National Information Standards Organization, Library of Congress, Society of American Archivists
Initial release	2004
Latest release	2010
License	Public domain / open standard

EAC-CPF

EAC-CPF is an XML-based standard for encoding archival records about corporate bodies, persons, and families, designed to improve discovery and linking of authority descriptions across systems. It is used by institutions such as the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek to represent provenance and relationships in archival finding aids and authority files. Major adopters and implementers include projects at the Archives New Zealand, State Archives of New South Wales, National Library of Australia, Harvard University, Yale University, and University of Oxford.

Overview

EAC-CPF was developed to capture entity-centric information in a structured interchange format, enabling richer linkages among records produced by institutions like the Smithsonian Institution, Victoria and Albert Museum, Library and Archives Canada, Wellcome Trust, and Getty Research Institute. The standard complements descriptive frameworks such as Encoded Archival Description, Dublin Core, MARC 21, Bibframe, and Resource Description and Access to facilitate integration with systems used by Princeton University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Columbia University, and University of Cambridge. It supports persistent identifiers and crosswalks with vocabularies managed by entities including the Online Computer Library Center, International Council on Archives, Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, and Getty Vocabularies.

History and Development

Work on EAC-CPF began through collaborations among stakeholders like the Society of American Archivists, Library of Congress, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Australian National Archives, and the International Council on Archives with input from projects at Zotero, DPLA Hub Program, and the OCLC Research community. Initial editions reflect influence from standards such as MODS, TEI, METS, EAD3, and ISO 690. Major releases were informed by pilot implementations at institutions including Yale University Library, Harvard Library Innovation Lab, British Library Labs, Europeana Foundation, and DigitalNZ. Subsequent revisions incorporated feedback from working groups at OAI-PMH-related initiatives, W3C workshops, and the National Information Standards Organization committees.

Structure and Components

The schema defines core components such as control, identity, description, relations, and administrative metadata used by repositories like Princeton University Library, University of Michigan, Bodleian Libraries, National Diet Library, and Biblioteca Nacional de España. Typical EAC-CPF instances interoperate with authority systems maintained by Virtual International Authority File, Library and Archives Canada Name Authority File, Gemeinsame Normdatei, and National Library of Israel. Elements model attributes similar to those in MARC Authority, ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), and RDF vocabularies promoted by W3C. The standard structures relationships to align with Linked Data work from DBpedia, Wikidata, Europeana Entity Collection, and initiatives led by Google Cultural Institute.

Metadata Elements and Syntax

Key metadata elements include identity (names, parallel forms), description (biographical history), relations (associations with corporate bodies, families, works), and control metadata (identifiers, maintenance notes) used in projects at HathiTrust, Internet Archive, National Library of Scotland, Royal Archives Windsor, and Library of Congress Name Authority File. The XML syntax supports attributes for language, script, and authority control compatible with vocabularies from ISO 639, ISO 15924, and protocols leveraged by Linked Open Vocabularies, Schema.org, FOAF, and SKOS. Implementations often map elements to triples expressed in RDF Schema and OWL for integration with knowledge graphs curated by Wikimedia Foundation, DBpedia Association, and institutional repositories at MIT Libraries.

Use Cases and Applications

EAC-CPF enables use cases such as authority file exchange, archival discovery interfaces, prosopography projects, and biographical registries deployed by National Archives (UK), Smithsonian Institution Archives, Blavatnik School of Government, Bodleian Libraries, and Wellcome Library. It supports cross-repository linking for digitized collections at British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Getty Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and powers annotation platforms used by Stanford Digital Repository, DHRL, and collaborative humanities projects at King's College London and University College London. Scholarly research infrastructures such as Perseus Project, Mapping the Republic of Letters, and Pelagios have informed application patterns.

Implementation and Tools

Tools and toolkits include XSD schemas, transformation stylesheets, and repositories developed by Library of Congress, SAA EAD Working Group, OCLC, ArchivesSpace, AtoM (Access to Memory), Blacklight, and DSpace. Software supporting EAC-CPF includes converters in Python, Java, and PHP used by technical teams at Harvard Library, Princeton University, Cornell University Library, and University of Vienna. Validation and indexing pipelines integrate with Solr, Elasticsearch, Fedora Commons, and linked data triplestores like Apache Jena and Virtuoso employed by Europeana, DPLA, and National Archives of Australia.

Standards Compliance and Interoperability

EAC-CPF aligns with international standards and recommendations from International Organization for Standardization, ISO 690, ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), and guidance from International Council on Archives and National Information Standards Organization. Interoperability is achieved through crosswalks to Dublin Core, MARC 21, Bibframe, EAD, and Linked Data frameworks promoted by W3C and operationalized by aggregators like Europeana, DPLA, and OCLC WorldCat.

Category:Archival standards