We're excited to share that the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives<https://archives.albany.edu/> at the University at Albany, SUNY, in partnership with the Empire State Library Network<https://www.esln.org/> (ESLN), is launching the ArcLight Integration Project<https://archives.albany.edu/web/arclight_integration/> to further access to digital materials.
The work aims to allow ArcLight to support both digital and physical archival materials, integrating archival description and full-text content through the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). This will streamline how users discover and access both online and offline collections and simplify the management of digital materials for archivists.
Key Project Goals:
* Unify discovery: Allow users to access both online and offline collections in a single interface.
* Use archival description: Enable archivists to describe digital collections with the same methods as physical materials, allowing them to create metadata in proportion to the value of materials and even make digital objects accessible with minimal description when appropriate
* Simplify technology: Lower implementation barriers for ArcLight, particularly for under-resourced institutions.
* Experiment with new indexing approaches: Experiment with multilevel archival description indexing to better manage complex archival structures.
To support this work, we will facilitate a collaborative community effort to create open specifications for how archival descriptions should incorporate digital objects. These documents will be the foundation for the development of integration tools and workflows.
For more detailed information and ongoing updates, please visit the project website<https://archives.albany.edu/web/arclight_integration/>.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services award LG-256722-OLS-24<https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-256722-ols-24>.
Gregory Wiedeman
University Archivist
M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives
University at Albany, SUNY
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518-437-3936
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