Comments on: ArchivesZ: Visualizing Archival Collections

By: SAA2008 Here I Come! After the Revolution: Unleashing the Power of EAD - SpellboundBlog.com - spellbound by archival science and information technology in the digital age

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:21:54 +0000

[...] portion of the panel will focus on my ArchivesZ information visualization project. I will be discussing both the power of this type of graphical interface to archival collections as [...]

By: SAA2007: Content Aggregation, Shareable Metadata and Access (Session 607) - SpellboundBlog.com - spellbound by archival science and information technology in the digital age

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:51:02 +0000

[...] anyone who has been following my blog – you will already know about my ArchivesZ project from last spring. One of the big struggles we had was figuring out how to make the subject [...]

By: Summer dispatch « booktruck.org

Summer dispatch « booktruck.org — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:29:44 +0000

[...] not really related but long overdue, check out Jeanne’s post on (and Google Code page for) ArchivesZ, a tool for visualizing [...]

By: Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:46:53 +0000

Oh my goodness! What a wonderful tool! Thank you so much for developing this extension of EAD. I hope that someone sends some grant money your way so that you can develop this further.

I for one think that younger users are definately waiting for this type of visual access which allows browsing. And researchers who have used archvies a few times will certainly appreciate the significance of linear feet (although we Canadians will have to pull out our calculators to figure out how many meters that is, ha ha)

Thanks again!

Bruce

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:02:15 +0000

Peter,

Thank you for the kind words!

This was, in fact, built from scratch – using Adobe Flex, Ruby on Rails and MySQL. There are some details about the architecture in our paper (linked to above). I am working on getting a version online with a smaller dataset. I will definitely post when it is ready for people to play with it (though I will have to remind everyone that it is definitely still a prototype and has a lot of things waiting to be improved!).

Jeanne.

By: Peter Van Garderen

Peter Van Garderen — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:47:14 +0000

Just watched the demo video. Very nicely done. This can be a great tool for advanced researchers and reference archivists. Visualizing the collection extent is one of (several) missing links in archives accessibility.

Did you build this from scratch or did you customize an existing tool? How about a web-version?

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Mon, 14 May 2007 03:12:57 +0000

Jordon,

Actually, we envisioned this tool as useful for both the management side as well as for ‘end users’.

In our paper we included the following descriptions of potential target users beyond archives management:
Researchers with very specific interests might use ArchivesZ to permit easy identification of institutions with archival collections fitting the criteria of their research. It is frequently the case that researchers must travel to archives in order to do their research, and a rapid grasp of the quantity of materials that cover the time period and subjects of interest may be an aid in planning.

ArchivesZ could enable exploration of locally held archival collections by students to promote use of primary materials. In contrast to researchers who frequently have very specific interests before they examine the collections held by an institution, students in the university setting likely are not aware of what primary sources are available. A tool like ArchivesZ might encourage the browsing and open ended exploration of the available collections.

Jeanne

By: jordon

jordon — Mon, 14 May 2007 03:04:47 +0000

Fantastic. I take that it’s a tool for the management side and not for public consumption, right? Not sure if users would care how many linear feet of materials there are in the archives for a given subject. Although the premise is intriguing.

Congratulations!