Recently, the CHC formed a partnership with the Cambridge Public Library (CPL) in an effort to make our collections more digitally accessible. With the help of CPL Archivist Alyssa Pacy, we have begun to encode finding aids from our repository and upload them into an ArchivesSpace account that the CPL is kindly sharing with us.
Some of our readers may be wondering why this project is beneficial, or you may be unsure about what encoding a finding aid means. Let’s start at the beginning:
After a collection is donated to us, we perform a number of steps to ready the materials for research and use. Among these are physical processing as well as arrangement and description. The final product of this process is an organized collection with an accompanying finding aid, a document that describes the records and their significance.
At the CHC, we create print and PDF copies of our finding aids to be used in our office and to make available on our website.
Whereas these versions are text-searchable, encoding a finding aid renders the text machine-readable and gives meaning to each section described. This is achieved by encoding the finding aid in XML (Extensible Markup Language). This process is akin to writing HTML to create a website.
After our finding aids are encoded, we upload the XML document to a platform that can convert this information to display nicely for human eyes while still retaining the machine-readable “meaning” behind the words. In our case, we are using ArchivesSpace.
One example of this capability is in the subjects section. In paper or PDF finding aids, these items are simply words that convey the multiple subjects that may exist within a collection. Employed digitally, these subjects link collections with the same subject by just clicking your mouse.
So, we hope you are as excited about our ArchivesSpace partnership with CPL as we are! We hope to continue to encode both new and existing finding aids to make all of our resources from the CHC more accessible. In the meantime, follow the links below to view our ArchivesSpace page or browse one of our available finding aids: the Cambridge Manual Training School/ Rindge Manual Training School/ Rindge Technical School Collection. We would love to hear your feedback!