A major problem in conducting historical research is locating appropriate primary source materials. This is especially difficult when the materials are scattered among different libraries and archives. The American Heritage Virtual Archive Project attempts to provide a partial solution to this situation. Based at the University of California at Berkeley, it tests the feasibility of maintaining on the World Wide Web a searchable database of archival finding aids from different sources. If the project continues along the lines presented in the test site, it should benefit scholars and citizens in locating diaries, papers, photographs, and other items.
The project builds on work begun by the Berkeley Finding Aid Project and the California Heritage Digital Image Access Project. Collaborating institutions University of California‐Berkeley, Stanford University, Duke University, and University of Virginia designed electronic versions of finding aids for portions of their archive collections covering nineteenth and twentieth century American history and culture. The aids are maintained by the member libraries then loaded onto the union database. Collection level records use US MARC format; and the aids are encoded with Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) developed in the Berkeley Finding Aid Project. Keyword searching for finding aids is conducted using a Z39.50 compliant search engine. At the time of this review, encoded versions of the actual materials were not available nor part of the project’s long range plans.
As presently constituted (the site was examined during the period 12 May through 30 May), the site’s main page contains a brief project overview plus six links. These links take users to a full project description, the main database, the Encoded Archival Description project (EAD) home page, a page of EAD guidelines, various SGML and EAD tools, and a FTP site mirroring many resources found on the WWW version.
The heart of the site is an experimental finding aid database. At the time of this review, links were available to materials from University of California Berkeley, University of California San Diego, Duke University, Yale University, and the Library of Congress. The University of California Berkeley site also provides links to materials from the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and eight University of California campuses. Also provided is a simple search engine for locating materials across all sites. However, the Yale site was not accessible at the time of this review, and only University of California Berkeley, University of California San Diego, and Duke had materials in the database. These institutions provide both SGML and HTML versions of the aids, using a DynaWeb server for on‐the‐fly conversion from SGML to HTML format. However, the Library of Congress aids are only available using a SGML compatible browser. A link to the SoftQuad home page allows for downloading a Panorama SGML browser.
Individual finding aids for each institution are arranged in alphabetical order by name of collection. And users do find an interesting range of materials on the site. For example, the University of California Berkeley site lists materials on the Spanish settlement of California, Berkeley police department records, California gold rush letters, records from the City Lights bookstore, and social protest materials. Duke University aids include records from the Duke family papers. The Library of Congress aids cover the Shirley Jackson Papers, the NAACP register of visual materials, and the Federal Theater Project Collections. Individual records for finding aids contain a title page, collection description, administrative information, biography or background information on the subject, series description, and a collection container list.
Currently, the American Heritage project is not a usable tool for librarians, archivists, and researchers. However, these parties should watch the progress of this project. It extends the capabilities of OCLC WorldCat in locating similar primary source materials held among different institutions. Perhaps this site should be reexamined within the next year to check its progress.
