ITR/RUI: Accessing FDR's America : Enhanced Search and Retrieval

Marist College, Poughkeepsie NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project explores new ways of searching, organizing, preserving, and interacting with large information resources in the humanities and the social sciences. It involves the creation and support of a digital library of materials of significant international importance drawn from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Digital Archives (which includes image, sound, video and textual data), and the encoding, annotation, and multi-modal linkage of a portion of the collection to develop state-of-the-art methods for search and retrieval. The goal is to establish methods and procedures that can be later applied to the full FDR collection, and to consider the best means to enable flexible and creative access to this important resource. The project involves, on the one hand, computer scientists with significant experience in the representation of and access to on-line data, together with historians who require sophisticated and intelligent access to on-line historical resources. Because we will apply techniques from several technical fields to data that is typical of the humanities, the project represents an important cross-disciplinary effort. Another benefit is the collaboration between two undergraduate liberal arts institutions, Marist College and Vassar College, and the potential to involve students from both institutions in cutting edge research.