Visualizing Archival Collections

FAIN: HD-50505-08

University of Maryland, College Park (College Park, MD 20742-5141)
Jennifer Golbeck (Project Director: April 2008 to April 2010)

The development of visualization tools for assessing information contained in electronic archival finding aids created with Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

The proposed project will build on the research and prototype development work done in the creation of ArchivesZ. This project has two goals. The first is to design and evaluate interfaces for visualizing aggregated data harvested from EAD encoded archival finding aids. The second is to analyze and develop recommendations for handling issues related to the lack of subject term standardization in the description of archival collections. This will lay the foundation for future work to develop a tool for use in visualizing archival collections from institutions using EAD to encode their finding aids. A tool for visualizing this broad range of archival collections would support both experienced and amateur researchers in their efforts to locate new materials. Any set of archival collections could be evaluated an an aggregated manner. Visualization tools can support discovery of relationships among time periods and subjects that otherwise may never be detected.