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ArchivesZ: Visualizing Archival Collections

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Announcing ArchivesZ – a tool for visualizing archival collections. This prototype is the final project for my information visualization class. It is a web based tool designed to support exploration of aggregated data about archival collections – inspired by the availability of structured data in EAD encoded finding aids.

For visual thinkers who just want to see what this is about – take a look at our 5 minute video demonstration. I don’t yet have a version online for folks to play with – but that is in the works.

This is the official blurb we came up with to describe the project:

ArchivesZ is an information visualization tool designed to support search, understanding and exploration of of archival and manuscript collections. The tool addresses one of the major challenges facing those who work with archival records – the need to understand the scope and quantity of available records. Since archival collections are unique, vary dramatically in record quantity and are organized based on the records creators it can be a great challenge for users to gain perspective concerning the available records across multiple collections. ArchivesZ leverages a unique dual sided histogram to support exploration of the multiple subjects assigned to each collection. As subject terms are selected, the dual sided histogram chart is generated to display related subjects. The tool combines the dual sided histogram with a more traditional histogram displaying year data to permit tightly coupled, multi-dimensional browsing of subject and time period metadata. By representing the distribution of subjects and time periods using the metric of total aggregate linear feet of associated collections, ArchivesZ permits users to get a better sense of total available research materials than they would by viewing a standard search result list.

If you are curious about what a ‘dual-sided histogram’ actually is (or just want to read more about the process and ideas that led us to the current incarnation of ArchivesZ) take a look at our final paper about ArchivesZ.

There is a very long list of features I would like to add or improve but of course there is only so much you can do in the few weeks available for a project like this. Some of our ideas are detailed at the end of the paper I linked to above. I plan to continue working on ArchivesZ and I welcome all feedback – either as comments to this post or via email to jeanne AT spellboundblog.com.

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Supporting Appraisal of Digital Records

In his recent post to the A+A Listserv, Richard Pearce-Moses explores some really interesting ideas related to the appraisal of a listserv. The notions that particularly caught my imagination were in these passages:

We could take advantage of the fact that the list is in electronic format and conceivably use some AI filters to do some weeding. But at what cost? Is this truly feasible? And what are the implications on the integrity of the collection if only a portion are saved?

I was particularly interested in the number of people who said they searched the lists’ archives. Although demonstrated use can be used to justify preservation, what is sufficient use and how do we measure it? Are there use patterns that suggest these messages are inactive, with use falling off over time in a pattern that suggests they not be kept permanently? (To my knowledge the server logs are not accessible.)

What sort of infrastructure could archivists work toward putting in place to support automated weeding of listserv postings? If the postings were not sent via email but rather posted via some other interface, I can imagine a choice being presented at the time the post was written ‘Keep’ vs ‘Discard After 6 months’. There is something like this already in place for some government email systems – the sender indicates if the message is ‘permanent’ when the message is sent. Of course that presents a whole series of new problems. Someone in one of my classes mentioned that U.S. White House staffers had taken to marking EVERYTHING as permanent because emails that were marked not permanent were being scrutinized NOW. I wish I could find a source for this story online  – but all I am finding today is the latest hubbub about White House staffers using non-government email accounts to communicate when they didn’t want to worry about it being preserved (or at least that seems to be the current allegation ). Luckily for this discussion we aren’t worried about people hiding posts.

Of course some of this can be implemented via those who post to the list. If everyone (anyone?) used standard post title prefixes, the appraising archivist of the future could easily filter out entire subsets of posts. SAA has this posted on the Terms of Participation Page for the Archives and Archivists List:

In order to maintain a highly informative and focused professional forum, SAA strongly encourages list participants to use the following labels at the beginning of all subject lines. This will allow others to filter list messages via mail rules and automatically select those types of information according to their individual needs and preferences.

  • “Calls:” (Calls for papers, survey participation, etc.)
  • “Disc:” (Discussion on various topics)
  • “Event:” (Conference, seminar, workshop announcements, etc.)
  • “FF:” (“Friday funnies,” see below)
  • “FYI:” (General announcements and information)
  • “Job:” (Job announcements)
  • “Media:” (Links to archives and archivists in the news)
  • “Qs:” (Questions)
  • “Pubs:” (Announcements re: books, chapters, papers, dissertations, and reviews)

There is a link to this page at the bottom of EVERY post to the listserv, but I have rarely seen anyone use these prefixes in post titles. ‘Job’ is the one that gets the most use, and usually only for a short time after someone politely ask everyone creating job posts to make sure they have good titles.

The idea of examining ‘usage’ patterns is also an interesting one. If we could easily capture and examine the view and search logs of posts we could build an understanding of what types of posts really are re-examined over time. But then what do we do with that information? Does past interest in a topic translate into permanent informational value? Just because someone didn’t look at it again yet – does that mean we assume that no-one will every be interested in its content?

My instinct (when wearing my techie hat) is to vote for the ‘keep it all – disk space is cheap’ approach. That said, I know that the expense of the space on that first hard drive you save your records on is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of digital preservation expenses.

Thinking about what you want to keep before you turn on any software system is always going to make things easier. I know that as the laws in the US continue to evolve to demand the retention of specific types of data the software will also continue evolve to make it easy to keep ONLY what needs to be kept. Private sector companies are usually quite intent on sticking to the letter of the law in that regard – they never want to keep more than they must (or so their lawyers like to tell them). It is also in the best interest of the software companies to ensure that all the required records are being kept.

Another driving force to generate systems that know how to filter and keep the ‘right’ records (whatever that means) could be individual users. In a universe of digital cameras where you can take 1000 photos as cheaply as 100 – I wonder if there is a place for software that intelligently archives your most frequently accessed (and tagged and shared) photos. The flip side of that could be auto-weeding (perhaps with a quick review option) every year. This would be the same approach some take to cleaning out their clothes closets – if I haven’t touched it in 2 years, then I should get rid of it.

While doing my research last term into the appraisal of Digital GIS records, I was amazed by how much of what was currently being done could only be accomplished by brute force. Frequently the work is being done through the sheer will of a small group of very dedicated people using tools not particularly suited to the task. I need to do more research into the realm of electronic record management – I want to understand what standard tools are being supplied (or not supplied). Are there tools for those who manage large repositories of electronic records where there is an acknowledged goal of supporting records scheduling and permanent preservation?

In our increasingly digital world, I think there will always be cases of born digital records that must be considered for appraisal without all the answers to all our questions. I am just fascinated at the notion of building the tools we need into the software systems from the start. At the end of a record’s active life cycle we would then be able to make and implement appraisal choices more easily. Imagine that – planning ahead for appraisal!

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WorldCat Identities: Visualizing Library Catalog Data

The folks over at OCLC have opened the doors on the beta version of WorldCat Identities a few weeks back. It provides a new way to look at the publications by and about specific authors and other ‘content creators’ such as musicians, playrights and movie producers.

The main page starts you off with the top 100. This is not merely a list of the 100 most prolific authors, rather creators have been ranked based on the combination of their own publications and other works about the creator. For example, Shakespeare lists 40,460 total works. A timeline displays the number of publications per 5 year period stretching from 1550 through to the present day. The only gap in publications occurred from 1556-1561 (how is that for a great trivia question?). The most prolific period of publications was actually from 2000-2005 showing 11,897 publications. We then get to see lists of the most widely held works about and by Shakespeare (Tales from Shakespeare and The complete works of William Shakespeare), an audience level, a list of related names and a couple of useful links (including a link to the Authority File and to Shakespeare’s Wikipedia entry). But wait – there is more! In the right sidebar we get to see a list of alternate names for Shakespeare. For example, the list includes 4 different versions of Shakespear’s name in Hebrew. We also get to see the list of Languages into which the works have been translated along with the number of works published in that language. Runner-up to English’s top value of 96,923 is German clocking in at 5,538.

Beyond the top 100 – you can search for any author you like. I love that the focus isn’t so much on book sales or ‘best sellers’ – but rather on library holdings and the aggregate of all the information our cataloging of books has assembled. The timeline visualization does a great job of giving you the big picture of when works (and those about the creator) were produced.

On my wishlist would be the ability to view the list of publications ranked in order by translations. It is no surprise to me that The complete works of William Shakespeare is the most widely held with “2,503 editions published between 1623 and 2007 in 25 languages and held by 47,606 libraries worldwide” – but it was tantelizing to see that Hamlet has been translated into 67 languages while MacBeth has only been translated into 53. What about learning which works have been repeatedly published over the longest span of years? Or seeing timelines by subject so you could look for changes in the type of works being published?

Overall, this is a great example of the direction I hope the archives community will move in permitting users to explore aggregations of structured data. By ‘structured data’ I mean those nice predictable units of information such as dates, locations, subjects and language. As more and more archivists furiously generate EAD finding aids full of these nice tidbits, we will have more and more data to explore and display in new and interesting ways.

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Book Review: Digital Preservation

In my quest for information about archiving geospatial data last term, I got my hands on a copy of Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner’s Digital Preservation (part of the Digital Futures Series). This excellent volume consists of nine chapters each written by different authors who are leaders in their respective fields (shown in order of their respective chapters):

This fabulous band of writers and researchers were led by Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner, both based out of the King’s College London.

Published in 2006, this is one of the most comprehensive and up to date books I found on the subject. The book starts out with two chapters addressing the basic issues related to digital preservation. Subsequent chapters present information about all kinds of metadata, web archiving, the costs of digital preservation and an overview of European approaches. The final chapter presents an extensive series of case studies – complete with URLs to give you plently of information online to explore.

This book gave me a great foundation from which to explore the details of various geospatial data and GIS archiving efforts. For those faced with the challenge of planning for digital preservation, the two chapters on costs should be very useful. So many articles talk about how it will be so expensive to ensure proper digital preservation, but don’t give people in the field any practical advice in planning for the costs – this book is different. The exploration of existing approaches being used at major institutions throughout Europe give a good sense of evolving standards and best practices.

If you are looking for a way to get a handle on the issues involved in digital preservation – this a great starting point. The final chapter on case studies alone could keep you busy for a month as you explore all the websites of projects from around the world. While the book has a decidedly European focus, the concepts are applicable the world over. If you are responsible for ensuring that digital records (either digitized or born digital) are protected and preserved – this book explains the basics and explores various strategies. They don’t oversimplify things – but take the time to explain things well. They are honest about those questions that aren’t answered yet… and they point to as many resources, standards and examples as they can. While Digital Preservation cannot provide a formula for everyone to follow, it can help you start asking the right questions and begin to understand the possibilities.

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Google Earth, Historical Maps and Ideas on Context

I have maps on the brain right now (just finished a 15 page paper about appraising geospatial electronic records) and a while ago LifeHacker gave me an excuse to install the latest version of Google Earth on my computer.

From LifeHacker’s Post: “To view these new old maps, you’ll need the latest version of Google Earth (use the program’s check-for-updates feature if you’re not sure you have it). In the layers section, select All Layers, then look for Featured Content > Rumsey Historical Maps.”

For the biggest bang – try the ‘Lewis and Clark 1814’ layer. I never really understood how large an area they traversed. This is such a great example of giving an archival record context. In this case it isn’t the context of who, when or why the record was created – it gives the user context that connects the record to the rest of the world. For maps this is easy to imagine (especially with Google Earth’s snazzy new Historical Maps), but what if we thought of ways to not only frame archival records within the context of their creation – but ways also to connect them with the current world.

When reading a newspaper article about a current event, the reader often will wonder about things that happened in the past that are related to what they are reading. One of the glories of the web is having terms hotlinked to other pages that give you more information about that term.

As more and more archival records are digitized (or are just born digital in the first place), the archival community will have the opportunity to find better and better ways to encourage the rest of the world to use said records in a quest to better understand current events. I see this as a major way for archives to earn the respect and understanding of the average person.

To some degree there is nothing now to stop a top notch newspaper (pick your favorite with a good online presence) from adding a “Learn more about this issue in history” sort of sidebar that links to a select list of relevant archival records. Many articles do this already to some degree simply by including images related to the story.

WPA Poster: Tuberculosis Don't kiss me! : Your kiss of affection - the germ of infection

Take the recent Washington Post article Quarantined about a woman diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1954. If you click the link to the photo gallery and go to the 4th photo in the set you will see an image from the Library of Congress. While it is attributed (in teeny tiny type) there is no easy way to go and explore other images like this one. Ah – but by doing a search over on the LOC.gov site on the words tuberculosis poster kiss, I find my way back to this same poster shown to the left (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster Collection, [LC-USZC2-5369 ]).

I am trying to imagine what the next leap beyond the sort of usage demonstrated by the Washington Post article would look like. Could we come up with a centralized virtual archive with the ability to do the following?

  1. permit registration of specific records – and allow assignment of meta data (such as date, location/GIS info, topic, and perhaps some keywords)
  2. build an interface for those who want to fish for related records to feature on their sites
  3. ensure that when a link to a record is shown, that the proper credits and links to the home institution are included

I guess what I am imagining is the equivalent of Google Ads for archival records. Sort of funny when I think of it that way. In fact – it makes me wonder if access to such a repository of well organized archival records available for use by online publishers could create some sort of revenue stream for those who carefully populate the metadata for records such that the online publishers can quickly find what they need. Would the keepers of the records provide the images themselves or thumbnails of the images with a link to the primary copy deep in their repository’s website? Talk about an interesting engine for fueling outreach and bringing in new web traffic.

I know that there are a million issues I am not thinking of (or thinking of and carefully ignoring) – but the best wild ideas pay no attention to the fine details when they are in the brainstorming stage. Let’s just leave it with the fact that I really like the idea of increasing exposure of the general public to primary sources. If we can both encourage and make it easier for purveyors of online content to use archival records to enhance their websites (especially with deep links back to the websites of online repositories) I think it can only serve to increase the profile of archives and their repositories.

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Amazing Visual Tools

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This has been a great week for exploring new visual tools. This post will look at one new tool that can compare photos to find images that have similarities to one another, another that creates 3D photo montages and a third that presents grouped keywords for image browsing.

First there is Riya, a visual search engine still in beta. I was especially intrigued by the Riya Personal Search that will let you use “face and text recognition to auto tag your photos”. Imagine a collection of 10,000 photos that include many combinations of the same 25 people. instead of going through and hand tagging them all – you should be able to use this feature to select good examples of each of the 25 people’s faces and let Riya’s magic do the busywork for you.

Over on Research Buzz they talk about Riya’s first commercial venture Like.com in Visual Search Engine for Finding Items by Photo. Basically this site lets you find clothing and accessories based on images in celebrity photos. What about buildings? What about automatic tagging of location by recognition of landmarks with distinctive shapes?

That leads us to Photosynth from Microsoft Live Labs . Photos are compared and stitched together into 3D models of space. ( Read more about how here.) They claim that the version they have out there now is a ‘tech preview’ or a ‘sneak peak’ at what is being built for real back in the labs. I played with it a bit – and it is very interesting. I love the idea overall – but I wish that there were a mode in which you could see the 3D world with many photos showing at once. Right now it shows you a sort of 3D point plotted version of the physical structures and then ‘hangs’ the individual photos in the proper place to give you a bit of ‘skin’ on the 3D skeleton as you browse through the photos. Take a look and play with it to see what I mean.

My fascination with this (beyond the cool factor) is the idea of feeding in photos taken a long time ago to create a virtual 3D space to walk through. The lower east side of New York City in the early 1900s or New Orleans before Katrina. I also wonder at being able to create 3D environments with a tie into time so that another slider control on the screen could let you alter the time you were viewing such that you could view the same facade change in fast forward.

Finally I wanted to share the approach taken by CSA Images for their Visual Brainstorming Index. They have provided a way to view keywords grouped by topic. Their goal is to inspire their customers by showing them terms that might jump out as being useful. This appears a great way to give users a quick grasp of what sorts of information (in this case images) can be found on this site. If a standard tool could show classified sets of keywords for users to explore it could go a long way to easily communicating the kinds of information available in a digitized archive online – especially if the browsable terms evolved as records were added to the collection. I am sure there are other great ways to communicate the big picture, but I think that a way to browse keywords or tags would give users a handle on the records in a way that a well written finding aid might not manage. Ask 100 users what a finding aid is. Then ask the same 100 users what a keyword or tag is. Moving to a model that users are comfortable with can only increase the use of the records we are working so hard to put online. Of course this assumes that the records in question are assigned keywords, tags or subject terms of some sort – but I think there are many paths to that (including the aforementioned Riya tool).

All three of these creations are interesting steps forward in searching through, processing and understanding images. As archivists make more progress in smoothing out the digitization process (or management of existing digital records), they will finally have more time to consider the wide array of tools that might make accessing those records easier. I hope that it happens sooner rather than later… and that those just starting the process of making archival records available online for research might make their plans with innovative ideas like these in mind.

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Archival Context and Description – Taking It to the Next Level

In her post Describe, display, explain…, Jill Hurst-Wahl of the fabulous Digitization 101 talks about being more ambitious and committed to describing things well. This resonated very strongly for me, for so much of what I believe about enhancing access to and understanding of archival records online is tied up with describing them well. I don’t mean this solely in the traditional use of the term Description as it is used in the archival arena – but more in terms of the Five Ws.

They are not so very different really. The best finding aids and item level meta data can give you the same type of background information that would make any journalist proud. Who created these records? What are they? Why were they created? Where were they created? When? How?

This gives me a great chance to point people again to the Library of Congress American Memory Browse Collections page. I fell in love with it back when I was doing research for the paper that became my SAA 2006 Poster, but I couldn’t put my finger on how to explain why I liked it so much. I think it goes back to that basic journalistic approach to thinking about things. Am I interested in who created the records and why? Browse by topic. Am I interested in where the records were created? Browse by place. Am I interested in when the records were created? Browse by time period. You get the idea. (In a perfect world, there would be an advanced search option that would let me specify more than one of these interests at a time – but that is a topic for another day.)

So much of this goes back to some of the basics of web design. If you care about this sort of thing and you haven’t yet read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think – do yourself a favor and get your hands on a copy. It is an easy, quick and fun read – and it will leave you wishing that you could force it on the designers of every frustrating website you have ever been forced to muddle through when trying to get things done.

What would it be like if users of online archival collections didn’t need to learn new terminology in order to get the most out of the records? What if you never had to hunt to find the background history for a record because it was so obvious where to click? While I love the idea of thorough item level descriptions – I understand why that is not a reasonable expectation for most digitized archival collections. What I want is the context for any record an easy and obvious click away.

Of course if you want the dreamy version, then I would encourage folksonomy tagging and end user descriptions of digitized items. I know this would not work many places – but I suspect some experimentation with this kind of model with the right sort of collections would take the “Do you know who is in this photo” sorts of appeals to the next level.

I remember asking in my first Archives course if the archivists take information from the users of the records and add that information back into the finding aids. The answer was of the “maybe… sometimes” variety – followed up with an explanation of how archivists often have private files about a collection that are not shown to patrons. The thought was that perhaps an archivist might add a note there. My thinking was that since one of the biggest challenges with archival records is that it is possible that any single researcher is looking at a record for the first time since it was created (at least in any intent sort of way) – wouldn’t you want to harness that attention and use it to help others know what that first person found there?

This is already being done at the University of Michigan with the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections. They permit entry of comments at the item level and support search of the text in those comments. Every time someone adds a comment they are extending the description of the item. Take a look this comment on the Silver Parrish diary item (this was listed as the most recent comment just know when I looked at the site).

So thank you Jill for making me think about description again – from a new point of view. The more we do to describe everything fully, make it easy to find that information and let our users add more information to the mix – the more dynamic, usable and alive archival records will become.

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Squirl.info – an interesting option for putting collections online

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I got an interesting email from the folks over at Squirl.info. They wanted me to take a look and see what I thought of their site. I explored it a bit and exchanged emails back and forth with one of the founders (John McGrath).

Okay – remember those big dreams of mine? Specifically relating to A Hosting Service for Digitized Collections and Archival Transcriptions? Well Squirl.info looks like an interesting option to explore with these ideas in mind. I will admit that the current collections are predominately individual collectors showing off what they have accumulated over the years – but you can start to get an idea of how this might work for digitized collections from looking at the Lewis Carroll Postcards and London Hospitals Postcards.

I had lots of questions for John. What about more than one image per item (I want to see the backs of those postcards!) – he says it is on the way. What about the clause in the terms of service about deleting inactive accounts – he says only empty ones.

I wanted to know how customized each set of meta data was based on the type of object you entered – had he considered any of the standards when setting them up. His answer (from an email to me):

In a previous life I wrote content management systems for publishing companies, so I’m aware of classification and taxonomic issues, and I made a conscious effort to play nice with the ones I was aware of when I built our system. Metadata can also be added to all items in the form of tags. We also have a feature that lets you export all your data in comma-separated files, letting you manipulate it however you’d like. Our general approach has been to give users as much flexibility with their data as possible, while trying to keep the site easy to use. And we’re wide open to suggestions.

So far so good. Then we get to the fun parts that are already part of what the folks at Squirl have already implemented:

  • RSS: Imagine providing an RSS feed to fans of your institution as an easy way to provide a steady flow of the latest additions to your online collections.
  • Blog Integration: Check out the Blog Widgets that will let you add a block of up to 10 of your most recently added items from any of your collection to your blog or other web page.
  • Easy Interface: They have done a nice job with making it easy and obvious how to get your content online.
  • Inexpensive: Three collections for free – unlimited collections for $10 a year. There is some mention of no ads with the Squirl+plus plan, but that seems to have more to do with your experience when adding content rather than your users’ experiences when viewing your collections.
  • Integration: Squirl’s collection view pages include links to not only the RSS feed, but also quick and easy icons to let those who view your collection to add the link to digg, del.icio.us, reddit and others.
  • Search: You get the free support of their built in search features.

My wish list is shorter:

  • an ad free mode for those viewing your collection
  • a direct URL for collections with a pretty name (maybe just a direct URL for an institution as the homepage for their collections – with a pretty name)
  • support for transcriptions (ie, to support the ideas I described in my Archival Transcriptions post)
  • support for groups adding content – and control of the privileges for those users (John says this one is in the pipeline, but no promises on when).
  • a way to export your ENTIRE collection (tags, images, meta data – the whole nine yards) – of course to a certain degree any web archiving software could do this for you to some degree

Go take a look at Squirl. See what you think. Create an account and experiment with your three free collections (you can keep them private if you like while you are experimenting). Ask the nice people for things you need – and see what they say. In a world where archivists are wishing for an easy way to get their collections online – this might be an answer for some of them. I suspect that some critical mass of archives using a single tool would help drive further support for features that archivists want and need.

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Interesting Interface for exploring E-mail: TrampolineSystem SONAR Platform

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Conversations and articles about the problem of archiving and accessing e-mail are often accompanied by the wringing of hands or the shrugging of shoulders. It has often seemed to me that figuring out how to archive and facilitate access to e-mail is a challenge that most people would rather ignore because it seems so difficult (and because there are plenty other things that need work too).

“In October 2003 the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission placed 200,000 of Enron‘s internal emails from 1999-2002 into the public domain as part of its ongoing investigations.” So says TrampolineSystems on their facinating website that lets you explore those 200,000 public domain e-mails using their SONAR platform (that stands for Social Networks and Relevance). I would highly recommend taking a look and browsing around the Enron e-mails.

It appears that SONAR somehow tags the emails without human intervention – though they do not state this specifically one way or the other. The implication from the SONAR PR page is that you plug in the platform – and you instantly have this new access to your information. It is my impression that this works for either a fixed collection of e-mails (as is the case with the Enron emails) – or for an active live e-mail collection that is changing over time.

I like the social network Visualizer and the way it shows you how people are related to one another as represented by their e-mail correspondence. I like the theme and people tag clouds. I like the ease with which I can search for and read emails. I like how clearly they specify what you searched on at the top of your e-mail result list – and how many e-mails, people and themes the list represents.

On the other hand, there are a number of things I wish I could do. I wish that it was clear to me what order the emails are listed in when I do a search on a term. I searched on the word ‘pager’ – and received 2012 emails in no obvious order (most likely relevance – but that is not at all clear). I would like to be able to re-sort the results (by date for example). I would like to be able to add together multiple tags and people to get a scoped list of emails between two people on a specific set of theme.

Just as in traditional archival collections – there is some non-unique information in the mix. I found a generic Hotwire promotional email while looking at the theme The Insider (4th hit on the list). While I suppose spam and legitimate e-mail ads (ie, ones you asked for) are interesting – perhaps software considering e-mail to retain permanently could block some of these somehow.

I like clicking on things in the Visualizer and seeing the social networks hidden within the e-mails – but that gets old quickly unless you are looking for something very specific. I found myself wanting more context. Who are these people? What are their jobs? How are they ‘officially’ related in the corporate hierarchy? How do these e-mails compare with a timeline of events? What about the content of attachments (they don’t seem to be part of this interface)? All of this information could be linked into this interface in such a way as to improve an outsider’s understanding of this amazing landscape of 200,000 e-mails.

All in all I think it is an excellent starting point and I applaud them for trying to find an answer to the email question rather than just ignoring the problem.

(Thanks to Boing Boing for the pointer to this site.)

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SAA 2007 Session Proposal: Preserving Context and Original Order in a Digital World

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Abby Adams, Assistant Access and Outreach Archivist of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia, and I are putting together a proposal for a session at SAA 2007 in Chicago. She and I found each other via my poster at SAA 2006: Communicating Context in Online Collections. We have been pondering many of the same questions related to the effective communication of context and original order in online digitized collections.

Our proposal is for a traditional 3 presentation panel with the title “Preserving Context and Original Order in a Digital World”. All we need now is a 3rd presenter, the endorsement of an SAA section or roundtable and (of course) the approval of the session selection committee. (And some plane tickets!)

This is the current version of our description for the proposal (mostly composed by Abby) :

Now that digitization projects have become more common in archival repositories, user and archivists alike have uncovered problems when it comes to understanding the context of online materials. However, there are various ways to provide more contextual information, thus enhancing the use of digital archives. But, archivists must confront the obstacles surrounding this task by developing best practices and incorporating new software into their digitization projects. In order to simplify the problem, we should return to our traditional archival principles and draw connections to collection arrangement and description in a digital environment. Join three archivists to explore how to improve on “analog” techniques in the communication of context. When done right, the digitization of a collection will not only retain all the same opportunities for communicating context that we are familiar with, it may revolutionize the way that archivists and users interact and understand our records.

The short take on what we want to cover in our session’s presentations is:

  • What should archivists be doing to not loose context and original order information in the transition from analog records to digitized records?
  • What can digitization give us the ability to do that we couldn’t do in the analog world?
  • What tools and standards are out there today to help archivists do both of the above? What information should archivists be capturing to permit them to take advantage of the opportunities to communicate context and original order that these tools and standards offer?

Abby’s part of the session, titled “Where’s the Context? Enhancing Access to Digital Archives”, will examine the need for preserving context and original order when digitizing archival materials – focusing on how it enhances online use and access to archives. How can new systems retain the existing ability to communicate context and original order when moving from “analog” to “digital”?

My portion, “Communicating Context: The Power of Digital Interfaces”, will discuss what archivists can do in the digital world they cannot do (or at least not easily) with analog records to communicate context and original order. I will focus on various innovative methods to do this including the use of GIS, hot-linking for ease of navigation, the ability to ‘collect’ digital surrogates for examination and more. I plan to include a combination of exciting new interfaces doing great things alongside new ideas of what could be done. Keep your fingers crossed for us that there is internet access in the session rooms in Chicago.

We have a vision of a third speaker whose talk would consider what the leading standards and software tools are permitting people to do today. How can archivists leverage the existing and evolving standards (EAD, EAC, TEI and other DTD s) to capture and communicate context and original order in the digital world? In addition, it would provide a high level review of common software packages (Archon , Archivists’ Toolkit, ContentDM , and others) and how they address original order and context. Finally we have a notion of a checklist of what to capture when digitizing to take advantage of what these tools and standards can provide for you.

Are you our mystery 3rd panelist that we are having so much trouble finding? Your first tip is that you have already mapped out 5 powerpoint slides in your head and started scribbling a rough draft of the “Archivists’ Digitization Checklist for Preserving Context” on a scrap of paper near your computer.

Maybe you know someone who would be a great person to pitch this to? Or you have advice for us concerning who to pass our proposal along to in the great hunt for that elusive session endorsement?

The deadline looms large (October 9)! Please contact us either via email (jeanne AT spellboundblog DOT com and adamsabi AT uga DOT edu) or in the comments of this post.

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