Waypoints A Digital Archive of U.S. Coast Guard History

IS257 Project PresentationChristine Jones, Jennifer Hastings, Ken Langford

U.S. Coast Guard Historical Archive

Maintained by U.S. Coast Guard historians office in Washington, D.C.

Donated materials from donors/donor groups; materials collected by USCG historians

Size of collection ~200K artifacts (depends on who you ask)

Diverse collection of artifacts Physical artifacts

(e.g., lighthouse lenses, artistic works)

Historical files (e.g., case documents of the Titanic sinking)

Photographic images

Current storage solution

Current access method (paper)

Current access method (digital)

Our solution: Waypoints Administrative interface

Capture information on artifacts in a structured, consistent way

Add U.S. Coast Guard-specific metadata to enrich collection

Public interface Access entire collection online Promote exploration of underutilized

historic materials

Conceptual Design: Usage Info Administrative interface

Users: historians, record keepers Needs: uncomplicated, fast input Tasks: record input, metadata creation

Public interface Users: USCG retirees, historians,

public Needs: support content retrieval Tasks: subject browse, keyword search

Conceptual Design: Data

Entities Artifact

Photograph, historic document, physical artifact, video, oral history, artwork

Creator Donor Collection Historian Historian Review

Conceptual Design: Metadata Entities (continued)

Year Person Thing Event Mission Unit Organization Location

ArtifactID

Artifact

User

UserID

Donor

Creator

Collection

HistorianReview

Historian

OralHistory

PhysicalArtifact

Video

HistoricDocument

Artwork

CreatorID

DonorID

CollectionID

HistorianReveiwID

HistorianID

ArtworkID

HistoricDocumentID

PhysicalArtifactID

OralHistoryID

VideoID

CreatorID

DonorID

CollectionID

Photograph

PhotographID

ArtifactID

HistorianReviewID

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

Logical Design: Waypoints ER Diagram

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

ArtifactID

HistorianID

DonorID

ArtifactID

Artifact

CreatorID

DonorID

CollectionID

HistorianReviewID

Year

OrganizationAssociation

MissionAssociation

UnitAssociation

ThingAssociation

LocationAssociation

PersonAssociation

EventAssociation

associationIDartifactID

personFacetID

thingFacetID

eventFacetID

missionFacetID

unitFacetID

organizationFacetID

locationFacetID

associationIDartifactID

associationIDartifactID

associationIDartifactID

associationIDartifactID

associationIDartifactID

associationIDartifactID

Person

Thing

Event

Mission

Unit

Organization

Location

Logical Design: Waypoints ER Diagram(continued)

Logical Design

Design Challenges Artifact sub-classing

Deciding which types of artifacts to represent

Handling photos Metadata structure and associations

Conveying many to many relationship Creating the flexibility to show the full

hierarchy of each piece of metadata

Physical Design PHP and MySQL

Implemented logical design in MySQL 4.1 and MySQL 3.23

Access Waypoints DB using PHP via Web interface

Web interface Photo input Photo detail Browse via metadata

Next Steps

Enrich the Administrative Interface Allow administrators to add artifacts Add capability to add metadata and

assign it to artifacts Continue adding data to the library Evolve the Public UI based on user

feedback

Feedback

Questions/suggestions?