The Digital Collaboration demonstrates the ability of three disparate, major national institutions to work together through one unified search tool. For the Beta Sprint prototype, the group used the Smithsonian’s existing Enterprise Digital Asset Network’s (EDAN) metadata schema to convert a small number of records and associated digital assets from the Library of Congress and the National Archives.
NARA provided eleven records sampling documents from the Online Public Access (OPA) system including 19th-century photographs, patents, drawings, and correspondence. The LoC produced ten records from their Performing Arts Encyclopedia, including music manuscripts of composer Johannes Brahms and several pieces of 19th-century sheet music. These were added to the 7.44+ million records with 570,000+ images, video and sound files, electronic journals, and other resources from the Smithsonian’s libraries, archives & museums.
I spoke with Martin Kalfatovic over the phone about the project. His team will be presenting at this week’s meeting. Listen here: