Application Briefs

APPLICATION BRIEF: ARCHIVES

Archivists have a special set of needs that has not been addressed by the content/digital/document management community in an expedient let alone cost-effective manner. itemright allows archivists to define, describe and deliver their collections of content to the Web in ways never available previously. The result is that archivists are now able to publish their finding aids and other collections to the Web more quickly and at less cost than was envisioned.

Archives have enormous collections of documents and other artifacts which, in most cases, are not digitized. It is fairly common for archivists to have their finding aids for these materials available only to themselves and to their patrons who come on-site. These aids are normally stored in MS Word or MS Access documents which are stored on a local hard drive. The result is that the general public and other users are not aware of what materials are available and take valuable time from staff requesting information via the phone or e-mail as to what records the archive actually has available.

It is not a daunting technical task to work with itemright. With itemright, it is possible to import information from finding aids in a CSV format and incorporate them into itemright immediately. Internet users may then browse and search against the finding aids to discover materials in which they may be interested thus reducing demands on archival staff. Furthermore, when the time comes for the archivist to actually build collections behind the finding aids, the framework for the metadata and other necessary elements will have been already put in place. Archivists may then import objects and apply prototypes to them right out of the gate. Since itemright is its own repository as well, archivists will have a comprehensive, quick-to-Web publishing solution available with advanced browsing and searching capabilities.

If archivists wish, they may use the E. A. D. standard (Encoded Archival Description) as their default value for metadata with itemright. Alternatively, Dublin Core or SCORM is also available.