John C. Martinez
Secretariat, Social Networks and Archival Context
National Archives and Records Administration
Social Networks and Archival Context (2010- ) is in the pilot phase of being transformed into an international archival description cooperative hosted by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The long term technological objective for the cooperative is a platform that will support a continuously expanding, curated corpus of reliable biographical descriptions of people linked to and providing contextual understanding of the historical records that function as primary evidence for understanding their lives and work. 14 organizations have joined as pilot members, representing archives, libraries, museums (art and natural history), government archives and institutional archives. Their responsibilities in the pilot phase are for the ongoing expansion and curation of the assembled SNAC social document data and the ongoing development of the History Research Tool (HRT). This session will discuss how the project team’s work with the pilot members has informed the plans for development of the HRT, training, standards, and policy for the cooperative.