1) How useful were the pre-course readings?

1: The pre-course readings were very useful and informative. 2: Course would have been meaningless for me without the readings. This is not to say they have to be completely comprehended, but the exposure is a must. 3: Not very helpful, or marginally helpful at best. They were of a highly technical nature, and were hard to relate to. Even after working with EAD I still don't find the readings very helpful. Maybe over time they will finally sink in! 4: The pre-course readings were very useful. What was a bit frustrating is that the concepts were covered in so much detail the first day. I felt I could have skipped the reading -- especially when it was so strongly stressed that they must be read. 5: Good to have some knowledge of the subject, although a lot of it I couldn't really digest. 6: Very useful. 7: The more technical the readings, the more I needed the class to make use of the information. 8: Thorough and will be particularly useful as reference tools in applying the course information. 9: Provided a good introduction to the topic, and will be useful for post-course revision. 10: Very useful -- having a background in XML conventions was a must. 11: The readings were a little more technical than I liked or wanted but my not understanding them did not hamper my participation in class, and actually sparked some good thoughts on the subjects. 12: The pre-course readings were very helpful. They helped me understand what was behind the technology that we were talking about.

2) Were the course syllabus and other materials distributed in class useful (or will they be so in the future, after you return home)?

1: Yes. I plan to use both the reading list and the materials when I return to my home institution. 2-3: Yes. 4: Excellent materials. Especially the software configuration we can choose to use. Very generous. 5: Definitely. 6: Yes. 7: At least 75 or 80% of the print and online material will be valuable for reference and further study. 8-9: Yes. 10: Yes. The XML files, templates, and stylesheets will help me a lot when I implement EAD in my library. 11: Yes. I am so grateful that I can take home with me on disk the work I did here. It is going to be a great help. 12: The syllabus and readings provided a clear structure to the class and they will be a good reference when I return home.

3) Was the intellectual level of the course content appropriate?

1-2: Yes. 3: Yes, but a little too technical for me. 4: Yes. I was worried that others would know more than I did, but it really was an introductory course. 5: Yes. It is highly technical stuff. So difficult to grasp immediately. But "graspable." 6: Yes. The class was made up of people with and without much systems experience, so I understand the difficulty of including technical topics without leaving others behind. The class stretched me. 7: Yes. 8: Yes, technical but not too advanced, basic features explained clearly, more advanced ones introduced with reference to the readings and workbook. 9-12: Yes.

4) What did you like best about the course?

1: The instructor, DP. 2: Excellent instructor -- no encomiums too extravagant here. Enthusiasm for subject, unpretentiousness, great sense of humor make for a first-rate class. Add to that a logical mind, ability to demystify complex problems, and you have the perfect instructor. 3: The instructor's personal style. 4: Encoding my own finding aid so that I have a product to go home with. Also encoding the example finding aid so I now have a good reference. Not only the practice but having it printed in the course book. 5: Hands-on work. Nothing like seeing your own finding aid come to life. 6: Marking up the finding aid I brought and seeing how the different computer applications intersected. 7: I found a good balance between the theoretical preparation of the reading list and first day and a half of class and the practical work of the remainder of the class time. 8: A thorough introduction to the topic with attention both to the underlying principles and techniques; presented in a knowledgeable and personable manner. 9: Hands-on experience, opportunity to work on our own finding aids, which makes it easier to apply EAD to institutional needs. 10: Hands-on experience marking up finding aids in EAD. 11: The easiness with which the instructor made everyone welcome and the way this course was taught. The group of participants was well-balanced. It was just a great learning process! 12: The opportunity to work in an encoding environment. It is good to understand how software works in order to tag things in EAD. I also enjoyed encoding my own finding aids.

5) How could the course have been improved?

1: I don't see much room for improvement. It was an excellent course. I'd just like to come back to Rare Book School to attend its follow-up course on publishing EAD. 2: There's still so much to learn -- a few more days wouldn't hurt. I'd have preferred to have the finalized reading list a bit earlier, but it's in the nature of EAD that things change, versions are suspended, readings are in flux. 3: Instructor occasionally lapsed into techno-geek mode and would demonstrate something pretty sophisticated on the screen. He would get so many clicks ahead I couldn't keep up. In these instances, it would be helpful if he could have provided dummy cheat-sheets instead. Maybe having a TA present during the encoding would also help so that the instructor wasn't spread so thin. 4: More about the actual tags and intended reasoning behind archival description. Not a whole day but one section, maybe. 5: More time spent with the hands-on. Maybe spreading the discussion/introduction/history deeper in and setting us off into keeping at same level everyday of the week. 6: 1) Reserve time to show all students any of our institutional finding aids that have interesting encoding problems so that we could all learn from them. This would be very helpful. 2) Update the workbook so that it no longer includes tags that have been dropped with the latest version of EAD. 3) Make clear and striking visual aids to help students learn and remember tag groups. Other illustrations could be improved and made more clear, such as on page 71 in workbook. 4) Leave out so much discussion of the politics of EAD development struggles -- not interesting to non-participants. 7: Perhaps a better method of addressing individual problems could be devised, though the class size was small enough to keep this from being a major problem. 10: The instructor might have spent a bit more time on XML basics at the beginning. The instructor spent too much time on the history of EAD. We did not need so many anecdotes about the politics of EAD. 12: Ability to print tagged copies of the finding aids we encoded.

6) If you attended the Sunday and/or Monday night lectures, were they worth attending?

1: Yes, I enjoyed the Monday evening lecture on Dante very much. 2: Yes. 3: Sunday was good, I did not attend Monday. 4: The Monday night lecture was a rather obscure topic. With no visuals an overwhelming amount of information packed in at a rapid pace -- it wasn't much of a relief after a day of class. Sunday night was fine but the whole evening a bit long after a day of travel. 5: A welcome is always nice. 6: Monday night more than Sunday night. Sunday night lecture needs to be focused more on the students -- why they are there. 7: Lectures were stimulating, despite, or because of, being pertinent to areas outside my professional interest. 10: Yes, the Monday lecture by Christian Dupont was great. 11: Yes. Both lectures were interesting and insightful. It is wonderful to be among kindred spirits while still being so diversified. 12: The Monday lecture was very informative and interesting.

7) If you attended Museum Night, was the time profitably spent?

1: N/A. 2: Yes. 3: Did not attend. 4: N/A. 5: I'm sure it was. I managed to miss it. 7: Same comment as above (Question 6). 9: Really enjoyed it, the notes were really instructive and gave a good insight into RBS collection. 10: N/A. 11: The items were wonderful! 12: It was nice to see what was available and being done in RBS.

8) Did you get your money's worth? Any final thoughts?

1: DP is both extremely knowledgeable about EAD and an excellent instructor. I think it would be difficult to find any equivalent training in EAD in such a short span of time anywhere else. 2: Yes -- definitely worthwhile. 3: Yes. 4: I got my institution's money's worth. Would I have taken this class for my own enjoyment? No. But did I feel it prepared me to go back and do my job better? Definitely yes. 5: Yes. It is a lot of money, but I do feel I understand EAD at a basic level and can converse with colleagues now with more success. DP was a tremendously helpful instructor to us all, is incredibly smart on all this stuff, and kept us upbeat and self-confident when we weren't sure. 7: I believe that I accomplished what I wanted to. The course has me confident that I am on the right track. 8: Yes -- the library got its money's worth; I'll be able to work with our existing EAD program with much greater confidence and skill. Thanks. 9: Yes. 10: Definitely worth the money. Anyone considering an EAD project should take the course, if possible. 11: Yes. You are very good at what you do here, and I am very grateful to have been a part of this. Thank you so much! 12: It is definitely worth the cost.

Number of respondents: 12

There were six archivists or manuscript librarians (50%), two rare book librarians (17%), two general librarians with some rare book duties (17%), one general librarian with no rare book duties (8%), and one curator of two research collections (8%).

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