OCLC Research will undertake a small scale experiment to explore the effectiveness of tools and techniques for bringing offline archival descriptions to the open Web.

The results of the 1998 Special Collections in ARL Libraries (.pdf: 619K/126 pp.) and the follow-up 2009 OCLC Research Survey of Special Collections and Archives (.pdf: 1.44MB/153 pp.) revealed that "hidden collections" are a challenge for archives and special collections. Usually, the term hidden collections brings to mind unprocessed and undescribed collections. But what about collections that are processed and described, but the collection descriptions are unavailable online? These off-line collection descriptions represent a special type of hidden collection, and also a special opportunity; the difficult intellectual work of arranging and describing collections is done and in theory, this is a last-mile problem which can be tackled with a small suite of tools and technology. OCLC Research will undertake a small scale experiment that will explore the effectiveness of tools and techniques for bringing offline descriptions to the open Web.

Outputs

The project will develop and evaluate a set of tools that allow archives with paper-based finding aids to be represented with minimal collection descriptions in ArchiveGrid.

Most recent updates: Page content: 2012-01-31

Lead

Merrilee Proffitt

Team Members

Bruce Washburn