May 5, 2011 -- On April 19, 40 people representing government agencies, public libraries and historical societies participated in a free online workshop that demonstrated a free and open Library of Congress-sponsored software platform for creating interfaces to digital collections.
During the workshop, NDIIPP staff member Trevor Owens demonstrated and explained Recollection, the free, open source platform for generating and customizing embeddable dynamic interfaces to digital collections.
Results of a survey of workshop participants underscored the value of this particular tool. All of the survey respondents reported that they thought Recollection had potential value. All respondents also reported they could see using Recollection in their work, and 65 percent felt their organizations could make use of the tool right now.
Recollection allows scholars, librarians and curators to explore digital collections in novel and intuitive ways. Content stewards start by ingesting collections from spreadsheets, sets of MODS records or RSS (external link) and Atom feeds (external link). Stewards then generate a range of interactive visualizations, including charts and maps, as well as sophisticated faceted browsing interfaces for users of their digital collections. Ultimately they can simply copy-paste to embed visualizations and interfaces anywhere on the Web. The tool is currently under active development.
A recording of the workshop can be viewed here: https://issevents.webex.com/cmp0306lc/webcomponents/docshow/docshow.do (external link)
If you would like to use Recollection to help explore and expose content from your organization’s digital collections please send us an email to to [email protected] with the following information:
- Your organization
- Your desired username
- A sentence or two about for what you are interested in using the tool
