Scientific (Re)Discoveries: Hidden Collections at the American Museum of Natural History

By Haley Richardson, Archivists Round Table Reporter

Archival materials in the Frank Boas Photo Collection illustrate the stark differences in levels of archival processing found by archivists working on the Hidden Collections project. Photo by Lauren Dzura.

In February 2011, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Research Library staff embarked upon two grant-funded projects designed to inventory and assess library and archives collections from the museum's science divisions. As part of these ongoing projects, teams of student interns collect basic information on uncatalogued collections of photos, correspondence, monographs, drawings, slides, and other formats from all departments. At the end of each semester-long cataloging phase, this metadata is transformed into a Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) record using MarcEdit, added to the AMNH Research Library OPAC, or transformed in to an EAD-encoded archival finding aid, to be later fleshed out based on newly discovered connections and current research interests. Some of the metadata will also be included in the museum's contributions to the Field Book Registry, which is being developed and hosted by the Smithsonian Institution Archives. In further fulfillment of project goals, a risk assessment phase is planned for inclusion in a larger, museum-wide survey of collections.

As teams of students plow through the collections, they are also creating a magnificent account of their work through the Hidden Collections project blog. The posts, many of which include photos and links to outside sources, read like diary records of archival intrigue. An intern may become fascinated by a photo and compose an entry devoted solely to a long-forgotten photographer or revered subject, or perhaps the puzzle of inventorying mixed-media collections might inspire a post soliciting help from supervisors and other interns. The sense of discovery evident in each entry is enough to make any history or science buff a bit jealous and may infect even the most world-weary archivist with a renewed sense of purpose and excitement. Lovers of data collection and information organization will enjoy reading about the development of workflows for data conversion, especially when they include flowcharts. Squirrel lovers, too, will find something of interest here.

At an Archivists Round Table presentation in June, AMNH Archivist Barbara Mathé, along with Project Archivists Iris Lee and Rebecca Morgan, described the projects, specifically the planned methodology for metadata collection and repurposing, as well as future plans for creating complex authority records to facilitate the use of linked data. The linked data will aid in connecting records within the institution, as well as connecting distributed data sets across the web and far beyond the AMNH's walls.

Although the collected metadata is very basic at this stage, archivists Lee and Morgan have already noted the project's impact on museum staff. Long-term volunteers have gotten involved in the inventorying effort by processing collections, creating finding aids, and beginning the task of defining controlled authorities. Just having the archival materials out of storage seems to be inspiring staff members to research and use the long-forgotten items. “Keeping an open conversation with the reference librarians and other employees in the Library about the work that we are doing has been a useful exercise for discovering related material or simply finding out about resources we did not realize we had,” they said.

One project goal- the repurposing of collected data sets to create linked data within the institution- is certainly on many archivists' minds these days. Lee and Morgan underscore the importance of extensible mark up, saying they are constantly thinking about ways to include linked data in the project metadata and catalog records by utilizing library and archives standards such as EAD and EAC-CPF, controlled vocabularies, and Google Refine technologies. To date, they have successfully repurposed the spreadsheet data collected by interns into a risk assessment database.

Thank you to Barbara Mathé, Iris Lee, Rebecca Morgan, and Laurie Duke for their help with this blog post. The AMNH Research Library also would like to thank the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Institute for Museum and Library Services for their support.

Check out the project blog here: http://images.library.amnh.org/hiddencollections/