Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative

The Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative (Empire ADC) is one of the newest programs being developed through ESLN and the I2NY initiative. Specifically, Empire ADC works toward the creation and maintenance of a centralized online finding aid repository and index that will allow for the discovery of New York State’s vast and varied archival holdings through a single portal. Finding aids are surrogate records used by archivists and historical researchers to provide access to – and information about – a given collection. The collection descriptions contributed to this portal will use encoded archival description (or EAD), which is the structural encoding standard on which archival finding aids (or collection guides) are created for distribution and sharing on the web. Locally created EAD finding aids can be harvested by Empire ADC. For repositories not currently creating EAD, Empire ADC provides a form submission tool (the EADitor) that does the encoding for you. Repositories of all types and sizes can participate in Empire ADC!

Empire ADC administration, training and support are provided locally through the regional councils that comprise the Empire State Library Network. Please contact your region’s Empire ADC liaison if you are interested in contributing your organization’s finding aids:

CDLC: Susan D’Entremont

CLRC: Ryan Perry

LILRC: Nicole Menchise

METRO: Traci Mark

NNYLN: Lydia Willoughby

RRLC: Ryan Hughes

SCRLC: Claire Lovell

SENYLRC: Kelsey Milner

WNYLRC: Jay Barone