Enhancing Access to Contextual Information on Individuals, Families, and Corporate Bodies for Archival Collections

FAIN: PR-50080-10

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Daniel V. Pitti (Project Director: August 2009 to August 2013)

Funding details:
Original grant (2010) $348,221.00
Supplement (2011) $14,999.89

The development of an automated tool for deriving contextual information from archival finding aids, enhancing the information by matching it with established authority records, and enabling links to multiple primary and secondary humanities sources.

We will address the ongoing challenge of transforming description of and improving access to primary humanities resources via advanced technologies. The project will test the feasibility of using existing archival descriptions in new ways, in order to enhance access and understanding of cultural resources in archives, libraries, and museums. We will derive Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) records from existing archival findings aids from the Library of Congress (LoC) and three consortia, and name authority files from the LoC and the Getty Vocabulary Program. We will produce open-source software used in the derivation and creation of the EAC-CPF records and a prototype access system demonstrating their value to the archival community and the use of primary humanities resources. The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, Univ. of Virginia, will partner with the California Digital Library and the School of Information, UC Berkeley.