While the Internet has greatly broadened research opportunities, it remains a decentralized and occasionally less-than credible reference tool. But imagine entering Tisch and finding a large share of its holdings at your fingertips (or at the end of your mouse, to be more specific), without wading through a sea of books, or other documents?
To make this a reality at Tufts, The Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, DC - a group dedicated to preserving or digitizing library materials - awarded a National Leadership Grant to the Tufts University Archives and Special Collections. Tufts is one of 12 institutions nationally to be awarded grants in the category of Preservation or Digitization for the year 2000.
The grant, which totals $143,885, will be used to fund a two-year project to develop a system of links among materials on history and London topography in the Electronic Bolles Archive, as well as to explore the possible complications related to a digital library system. The ultimate goal is to develop a general model for the needs and possibilities posed by evolving digital library technology.
The Electronic Bolles Archive is named for Edwin C. Bolles, an English professor at Tufts during the late 19th century. Bolles assembled an extensive collection of materials on Victorian London, which included extensive maps, images, and books. While organizing the collection, it seems Bolles anticipated modern hypertext by creating a system to link articles and books to pictures.
Tufts Archives sought the grant to continue Bolles's work in creating a simple-to-use linking system. "If a person was researching the Great Fire, he could read a text about it and immediately see a picture of what it is describing. Or look at a map, and then see text about what is on the map," explained Greg Colati, the university archivist, from his office in the basement of Tisch.
The new system will save researchers time by performing a single search across multiple resources, which enables them to access more information sources at once.
With the grant in hand - and Colati determined to realize what Bolles presaged long ago - the future of digital research at Tufts could be a mouse click away.
"[In the past] it would take years to find... books, look around for them, and get them out. Now a person can click on the screen and have all the resources at his or her fingertips. While they are reading about the city of London, they can all at once see thumbnails of pictures, get maps, read multiple texts, and [do] other things to manipulate the automatic index. It really is a big step up," he said.
The soon-to-be-linked resources on London history come from various media, including travelogues, sociological papers, autobiographies, and even fiction. Tufts archivists hope that the Bolles assortment will give people a better understanding of British culture of the period.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is a federal grant-making agency that promotes leadership, innovation, and learning by supporting museums and libraries. IMLS provides funding to all types of libraries to improve access to information through technology, to ensure equity of access, and to help bring resources to underserved audiences.
The number and amount of grants awarded by IMLS varies from year to year. In 1999, 905 awards amounting to over $33 million were made to museums and libraries. Additionally, over $135 million was awarded in 57 grants to the state library agencies of the every state, Washington, DC, and the US territories.
This year IMLS received 35 applications for digital projects; only 12 were funded. Other libraries receiving grants for digital projects included Cornell University, the Georgia Department of Archives and History, Indiana University, and the New York Public Library.
"This is the future of research. By linking all of these resources together a person can get a sense of what really went on," Colati said, excited that Tufts was chosen for the grant. "By creating this digital library people will have access to information in a cross-disciplinary way."
