This project was conceived by Associate Professor Elizabeth Yakel of the University of Michigan School of Information, who brought together a group of students to brainstorm new and creative methods of displaying archival content online. Individuals contributing to this project include:
Dharma Akmon
Andrew Bangert
Magia Ghetu
Ricah Marquez
Christie Peterson
Polly Reynolds
Seth Shaw
James Sweeney
About us:
Yakel sees current online finding aids to be inadequate, merely reproducing paper finding aids without taking advantage of their electronic environment. The digital realm allows for quick searching, interlinking, participation and collaboration, and interfaces beyond text, techniques a paper finding aid cannot do. While many repositories and archives employ EAD (or encoded archival description) in their online finding aids, no one has yet to take full advantage of all of the properties that EAD has to offer. Thus, we sought to expand the capability of EAD, make the archival and research experience collaborative and participatory, and challenge the traditional finding aid structure.
About the Polar Bear project:
The Polar Bear collections at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan proved to be an excellent experimental collection for us to frame our ideas. First, the Polar Bear collections have a rather devoted and interested audience. Researchers at the Bentley request these collections both for their historical as well as genealogical content. Therefore, we knew that online collaboration and participation would be possible and valuable. Second, the Bentley had just digitized all of the polar bear materials in their collection. Thus, providing us an excellent opportunity to not only experiment with finding aids, but also envision interfaces for linking digital content to finding aids in a meaningful way. Finally, the Polar bear collections at the Bentley have always been considered one group, even though they are made up of sixty or more individual collections. These collections, therefore, also provided an excellent opportunity for us to experiment with uniting physically separate collections intellectually without destroying provenance.
About our research:
As the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections site is a prototype finding aid, we are anonymously studying how the site is used through log data and publicly viewable user comments. Anonymity of all users will be preserved in all publications and presentations generated from this project. For more information about our research, please contact:
For Research Project Inquiries:
Elizabeth Yakel
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor
School of Information
550 East University, Room 301C
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092
Voice: (734) 763 – 3569
FAX: (734) 764 – 2475
Email: yakel@umich.edu
Should you have questions regarding your rights as a participant in research, please contact:
University of Michigan
Institutional Review Board
Kate Keever
540 East Liberty, Ste. 202
Ann Arbor MI 48104-2210
(734) 936 – 0933
irbhsbs@umich.edu
Technical Aspects:
Our finding aid projects depend heavily on Open Source Software for their implementation. The Polar Bear project incorporates the following software developments:Apache
The Everything Engine
MySQL
If you would like to know more about the technology behind our projects, feel free to ask. They are prototype solutions, that require some familiarity with PERL, MySQL and Apache to maintain, but should be relatively easy to use on the front end. At this time, our solution is not particularly portable or widely usable as we were more interested in developing and experimenting with different ideas.
Behind the scenes, the technology also focuses on archive-centered work, including collection usage statistics, pre-notification by users of arrival date, automatic call slip generation (with shelf location information) and other archival innovations.
Future developments:
Our group continues to expand and develop the next generation finding aid, experimenting with different collections, interfaces, and ideas. We plan to make modifications and adjustments based on how users interact and use these sites. Therefore, your feedback is very important!
Acknowledgements:
The staff at the Bentley Historical Library have been involved in all aspects of this project and we would like to thank them for their continued support and enthusiasm. We would particularly like to thank the following: Fran Blouin initially conceived of the idea of digitizing these collections, Ann Flowers organized and coordinated the digitization of all of the Polar Bear materials, Leonard Coombs created most of the finding aids that make up the bulk of the content on this site, Greg Kinney converted all of the finding aids to EAD, and Bill Wallach and Karen Jania offered invaluable advice and feedback into how researchers and users might approach and use the site.
We would also like to thank the University of Michigan School of Information Computing, for hosting our server and for helping with our technical needs.