EAD: Obstacles to Implementation, Opportunities for Understanding

Innovation diffusion theory explains different rates of adoption of new technologies as a consequence of potential adopters' perceptions of the innovation's advantages compared to alternatives, complexity, compatibility with accepted practices and values, trialability, and observability. Applying this analysis to Encoded Archival Description (EAD) suggests that its widespread adoption by archivists will depend on changing current negative perceptions of EAD's complexity and usefulness. Improving EAD's ease of use depends largely, though not exclusively, on advances in authoring and browsing software. User-centered research focusing on evaluation of the effectiveness of EAD finding aids offers the best chance of demonstrating EAD's advantages over other technologies for creating and delivering digital finding aids.

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