TRUE (AND FALSE)
STRUCTURED DATA IS ESSENTIAL FOR ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION & DISCOVERY
Presented by Barbara AikensArchives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution SAA, 2010
TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF STRUCTURED DATA
Create interesting, lively, meaningful, and web-appropriate online presentations
Repurpose Data
Visualize Data
Harvest Data
Share Data
Provide Context to Data
USING USABILITY STUDIES Recent online usability studies conducted by the Northwest
Digital Archives consortia; University of North Carolina; Archives of American Art; and many other repositories.
Are users confused by the actual structured data or the presentation of the structured data?
PROVIDING MEANING AND CONTEXT: DATA VISUALIZATION & MINING
“Elastic Lists” – visualization prototype developed by Michele Combs at Syracuse University Libraries (see http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/ElasticLists-EAD/binv4/bin/ )
“Archives Z” (Visualizing Archives) - Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, formerly at U. Md. (see http://www.spellboundblog.com/2010/07/07/archivesz-needs-you/)
“The Visible Archive” – visualization project developed by Mitchell Whitelaw at the University of Canberra, Australia (see http://visiblearchive.blogspot.com/)
“Bungee View” – data mining and visualization prototype developed by Mark Durthick, currently used for American Memory images at the Library of Congress (ttp://cityscape.inf.cs.cmu.edu/bungee/) . YouTube video demo link also available at http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/10/bungee_image_collection_browser.html
“Neatline Project” – geospatial and temporal visualization tool being developed by the Scholars Lab at the University of Virginia Library (http://www.scholarslab.org/projects/neatline/ )
FALSE
STRUCTURED DATA IS ESSENTIAL FOR ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION & DISCOVERY
OBJECTS, BOOKS, ARCHIVAL MATERIALS, AND IMAGES TOGETHER IN ONE
DATABASE Alexander Calder
National Postal Museum (5)
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (48)
Smithsonian American Art Museum (32)
National Portrait Gallery (30)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries (192)
Photograph Archives, Smithsonian American Art Museum (301)
Archives of American Art (160)
Archives of American Gardens (15)
Smithsonian Institution Archives (9)