n. (abbr. SGML)an international standard (ISO 8879) for structuring encoded dataPitti 1997, 276After determining that MARC would not provide an adequate representation of finding aid data, we shifted our attention to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML provides a promising framework or model for developing an encoding scheme for finding aids for a number of reasons. First, like MARC, SGML is a standard (ISO 8879). It comprises a formal set of conventions in the public domain, and thus is not owned by and thereby dependent on any hardware or software producer. Second, unlike MARC, SGML accommodates hierarchically interrelated information at as many levels as needed. Third, there are no inherent size restrictions on SGML-based documents. Finally, the SGML marketplace is much, much larger than MARC’s. ¶ While SGML is both standard and generalized, it does not provide an off-the-shelf markup language that one can simply take home and apply to a letter, novel, article, catalog record, or finding aid. Instead it is a markup language metastandard, or in simpler words, a standard for constructing markup languages. SGML provides conventions for naming the logical components or elements of documents, as well as a syntax and metalanguage for defining and expressing the logical structure of documents and relations between document components. . . .Hutchinson 1997, 90, fn. 3The EAD conforms to the Standard Generalized Markup Language, SGML (in principle, the relationship of EAD to SGML is the same as that of HyperText Markup Language, HTML, to SGML).Rubinstein 2017, 303As the MARC standard was piloted and crawling toward adoption, the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) was being developed by lawyer-turned-programmer Charles Goldfarb, along with Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie. SGML, focused primarily on creating a machine-readable markup for formatting documents, not only provided a strategy for adding structure to prose documents, it provided a framework for validating the structure of that document.Wiedeman 2019a, 398In the early 1990s, a group of researchers led by Daniel Pitti discovered that Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), an XML precursor, could be used to encode the “assortment of inventories, registers, indexes, and guides, generally referred to as finding aids.
