TY - GEN
T1 - A unified platform for archival description and access
AU - Prom, Christopher J.
AU - Rishel, Christopher A.
AU - Schwartz, Scott W.
AU - Fox, Kyle J.
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - The archival community has developed content and data structure standards to facilitate access to the diverse and unique sets of archival records, personal papers, and manuscript collections that are held by archival repositories and special collections libraries. However, these standards are difficult for archivists to use and are often implemented in ways that negatively affect materials-handling workflows, depriving archival users of the best possible access to the totality of materials available within an individual repository. The authors propose that archival descriptive problems can be addressed by implementing a web/database application that is tailored specifically to archival needs and can be implemented with little technical knowledge. This paper describes the system architecture of one such tool, the Archon software package, which was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archon automates many technical tasks, such as producing a searchable website, an EAD instance or a MARC record. Although the system utilizes sophisticated algorithms and optimizations, it is easily extensible because most development takes place in an easy-to-use, object-oriented environment.
AB - The archival community has developed content and data structure standards to facilitate access to the diverse and unique sets of archival records, personal papers, and manuscript collections that are held by archival repositories and special collections libraries. However, these standards are difficult for archivists to use and are often implemented in ways that negatively affect materials-handling workflows, depriving archival users of the best possible access to the totality of materials available within an individual repository. The authors propose that archival descriptive problems can be addressed by implementing a web/database application that is tailored specifically to archival needs and can be implemented with little technical knowledge. This paper describes the system architecture of one such tool, the Archon software package, which was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archon automates many technical tasks, such as producing a searchable website, an EAD instance or a MARC record. Although the system utilizes sophisticated algorithms and optimizations, it is easily extensible because most development takes place in an easy-to-use, object-oriented environment.
KW - Archival information systems
KW - Archon
KW - Databases
KW - Encoded archival description
KW - Web interfaces
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=36348964317&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=36348964317&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1255175.1255205
DO - 10.1145/1255175.1255205
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:36348964317
SN - 1595936440
SN - 9781595936448
T3 - Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries
SP - 157
EP - 166
BT - Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, JCDL 2007
T2 - 7th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, JCDL 2007: Building and Sustaining the Digital Environment
Y2 - 18 June 2007 through 23 June 2007
ER -