ARCHIVEGRID

One of the best ways to be represented is to include your collection descriptions in OCLC's WorldCat database. ArchiveGrid is largely made up of MARC records from WorldCat; if you are already contributing your MARC cataloging to WorldCat and don't see your records in ArchiveGrid, please let us know.

Otherwise, if you have finding aids in EAD, HTML or PDF format and aren't currently contributing MARC records to WorldCat, please complete the form to include your collections. Your role in getting your finding aids into ArchiveGrid is simply to give us permission harvest and use them. OCLC membership is not required to contribute your finding aids to ArchiveGrid, and there are no costs involved, beyond the time and effort on your part to provide us with a way to harvest your finding aid documents. We harvest your finding aids from a webpage you provide to us, and index them in ArchiveGrid. Any changes you make on to your finding aids, such as adding, editing, or removing finding aids, will be reflected in ArchiveGrid as your contributed data is updated.

Finding aids and MARC records are updated as part of ArchiveGrid's index maintenance, though this work is not currently carried out on a regular schedule. If you find that your contributed data needs to be updated in ArchiveGrid, please let us know.

As a discovery system focused on archival materials, and as a means of making these collections easier to find in search engines and elsewhere, ArchiveGrid illustrates OCLC Research's interest in advancing issues of importance to the archival community. It also serves as a basis for text mining and data analysis projects, and for experimentation and evaluations of discovery system features, carried out by OCLC Research staff.

We index finding aids harvested directly from contributors, and we also include MARC bibliographic records from WorldCat which we identified as Archival material. WorldCat records describing archival materials constitute more than 90% of the collection descriptions in ArchiveGrid.

There isn't a simple way to identify a MARC record that describes the types of materials held in archives, manuscript collections, and special collections. In order for a WorldCat record to be extracted into ArchiveGrid, it needs to meet the following criteria:

• Has only one library holding symbol attached (though we relax this rule for NUCMC records)
• Has a value of f, g, i, j, k, p, r, or t in MARC Leader byte 6, or the value "a" (language material) in Leader byte 6 and the value "c" (collection) in Leader byte 7, or the value "a" (archival) in Leader byte 8
• Has no value of any kind in MARC 260 or 264 subfield "a" or "b" (to filter out published works), though 264 fields with a 2nd indictor of 0 (indicating Production, not Publication) are accepted.
• Does not have "Bibliography" in the beginning string of a MARC subject heading subfield "a" or "v"
• Does not have a MARC 502 field (Theses or dissertation note)
• Does not have a MARC 015 field (National bibliography number)
• If the record has the material type "book" or "serial", has no value in the MARC 008 or 006 "Nature of Contents" bytes (to eliminate theses, reference works, and other non-archival materials)

With MARC records and EAD XML finding aids, we can take advantage of the document markup to identify "facets" of information in the description, including the names of people, groups, places, topics, and events. HTML pages and PDF files do not provide us that same level of detailed markup for their descriptive data, but there are ways to optimize those formats for searching and display in ArchiveGrid. For HTML files, it's important to include a specific title for the finding aid in the HTML Head Title element.

PDF files include internal document properties for the title, author, subject and other fields. If you supply values in these fields, the ArchiveGrid system can use those values for the document title and for an abstract in brief search results. Elizabeth Post and her colleagues at Boston College Libraries have put together an excellent summary of their experiences in enriching PDF documents, for improved interoperability not just for ArchiveGrid but for any search engine that indexes their finding aids. Read more about it in their paper "Embedding metadata in PDF finding aids to enhance discoverability".

Duplicate entries result from harvesting finding aids and extracting WorldCat MARC records for the same collection. While we continue to work on a way to effectively cluster or de-duplicate these two forms of the collection description from the same contributor, we have hesitated in favoring one over the other as each includes access points not found in the other. We are trying to maximize access and discovery, so in this situation we've decided to favor recall over precision.

OCLC does not claim copyright ownership of individual collection descriptions contributed to ArchiveGrid. More information on rights and responsibilities and a legal statement are available on the web page where you can request to include your collections.

Collection descriptions from around 1,500 institutions - libraries, museums, historical societies, etc. - are included in ArchiveGrid.

We transitioned from a subscription-based service to a freely available system in 2012, in order to make the index available to everyone - faculty, scholars, family history researchers, students, and others. ArchiveGrid remains an OCLC Research project, allowing us to improve archives and special collections research through studies of researchers, description, and discovery.

When ArchiveGrid started in the late 1990s as a way to test if EAD finding aids from different sources could work well together in one search system, we mostly had faculty and college students and genealogists in mind as our researchers. We later gathered data about these user groups from studies, and we continued to make system design improvements based on their needs. In a study conducted in 2012, we surveyed archives and special collections users and learned that primary source research is still an important focus for faculty, students and genealogists, but it also plays a role for people motivated to search for archival materials by something in their personal and professional lives. This important segment of archives and special collections include filmmakers, writers, designers, hobbyists, and much more.

We use Google Analytics to track site visits and show selected current statistics. We recognize that discovery frequently begins with search engines, so we put special effort into promoting ArchiveGrid's collection descriptions in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other popular services.

Yes it does. We create temporary "functional" cookies that last only for the length of your session, to help remember your preferred location on the map shown on the ArchiveGrid home page. ArchiveGrid also uses Google Analytics to evaluate how the system is behaving, and temporary performance tracking cookies are set for that purpose. We're not using cookies to personally identify users or for behavioral advertising purposes. You're not required to have cookies enabled in your browser to use ArchiveGrid. For more information, consult the OCLC Cookie Policy document describing the use of cookies in OCLC services.