Of Maps and Metadata

http://www.nypl.org/r...

Of maps and metadata:
Explorations in online access at the National Archives of Australia
Dr. Tim Sherratt, National Archives of Australia

Monday, April 6, 2009 ? 12 PM-2 PM

South Court Auditorium
Stephen A. Schwartzman Building
The New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY

This program is free and open to the public.
No registration is necessary.

The National Archives of Australia provides online access to 1.6 million fully-digitized files, totaling more than 20 million digital images. Another 6 million are described in its online database. This represents only about ten per cent of of the Archives' total holdings, but it's more than enough to challenge the skills of even the most experienced researcher. As these numbers continue to grow, issues of access, findability and visualization will become increasingly pressing. How will we orient researchers within this mass of data? How will we help them find what they want? How will we help them use what they've found?

In November 2008, the National Archives of Australia launched Mapping our Anzacs <http://mappingouranza..., a Google Maps based interface to the 376,000 World War I service records in its care. Through this site, users can browse places around the world where service people were born or enlisted, following links to digitized copies of their records. They can also contribute notes and photos through an online scrapbook. Mapping our Anzacs provides a wholly new way of accessing and interacting with the collection and has proved very popular, but how can the ideas underpinning its development be applied more broadly?

This talk will discuss the past and future of Mapping our Anzacs and introduce some of the other online initiatives being explored by the National Archives of Australia.

Dr. Tim Sherratt works as a web content developer at the National Archives of Australia. He is a historian of Australian science and culture who has been developing online resources relating to archives and history since 1993. He has written on weather, progress and the atomic age, and has developed resources including Bright Sparcs and Mapping our Anzacs.

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Mark A. Matienzo
Applications Developer, Digital Experience Group
The New York Public Library