How to Use the DDI DTD in Day to Day Archive Practice

Marion Wittenberg
NIWI / Steinmetz-archief
The Netherlands


NIWI has made the choice to produce and store the metadata in a relational
database and to use XML only as an exchange format. We think that in a
database environment it is easier to control the documentation process.
For publishing on the WEB and NESSTAR we export the metadata into XML
files. Lots of European archives seem to struggle with this problem. As
far as we know, most archives have not made a final choice.

In our data model, we have made some enhancements to the DDI DTD. For
instance, changes to document a data collection of historical data. Our
data model has been extended to document the relation between the data and
the original source. Another enhancement provides for including
information about a series of data files.

We are also evaluating another documentation system called ILSES. ILSES
has the ability to link publications to studies and even to variables. In
my presentation I will discuss the problems we have encountered and the
solutions we have developed to convert the ILSES metadata into DDI XML
files.