THE PROJECT
For this second assignment, I have chosen to report on FRANKLIN, a digital archive and virtual research room of sorts that provides free and open access to the digitized materials house within the Roosevelt Library. This digitized information is housed at the Roosevelt Library's website, www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu , which is hosted by Marist College, was launched on December 4th, 2013 and is a result of a collaboration between the Roosevelt Library, Marist College, the National Archives, IBM (the Marist database's corporate funder for the project), and the non-profit Roosevelt Institute. The goal of the FRANKLIN project was to allow researchers, students, and history buffs the opportunity to access all Roosevelt Administration records and public domain photographs from the comfort of their own home, thereby democratizing access to essential information pertaining to the history of the United States. Materials consist of what are considered some of the most important documents of the 20th century, those being primary source materials representing Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt's experiences in the White House during World War II and the Great Depression. When FRANKLIN launched, it consisted of 350,000 pages of archival documentation and 2,000 historical photographs. The inspiration for the project was Roosevelt himself, as he once stated in a 1942 letter to the president of the Society of American Archivists, that he encouraged the duplication of records by modern processes (at the time, this was through microfilm). He believed that should any original documents at all be destroyed, there would ideally exist a copy. Throughout the years, the FDR Library followed his advice, and with the rapid growth in technology after the new millennium, the collaboration by the participating institutions allowed for the digitization of a vast amount of microfilm contained in the FDR Library. To this day, the collaboration continues, and microfilms continue to be digitized and added to the FRANKLIN collection.
For this second assignment, I have chosen to report on FRANKLIN, a digital archive and virtual research room of sorts that provides free and open access to the digitized materials house within the Roosevelt Library. This digitized information is housed at the Roosevelt Library's website, www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu , which is hosted by Marist College, was launched on December 4th, 2013 and is a result of a collaboration between the Roosevelt Library, Marist College, the National Archives, IBM (the Marist database's corporate funder for the project), and the non-profit Roosevelt Institute. The goal of the FRANKLIN project was to allow researchers, students, and history buffs the opportunity to access all Roosevelt Administration records and public domain photographs from the comfort of their own home, thereby democratizing access to essential information pertaining to the history of the United States. Materials consist of what are considered some of the most important documents of the 20th century, those being primary source materials representing Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt's experiences in the White House during World War II and the Great Depression. When FRANKLIN launched, it consisted of 350,000 pages of archival documentation and 2,000 historical photographs. The inspiration for the project was Roosevelt himself, as he once stated in a 1942 letter to the president of the Society of American Archivists, that he encouraged the duplication of records by modern processes (at the time, this was through microfilm). He believed that should any original documents at all be destroyed, there would ideally exist a copy. Throughout the years, the FDR Library followed his advice, and with the rapid growth in technology after the new millennium, the collaboration by the participating institutions allowed for the digitization of a vast amount of microfilm contained in the FDR Library. To this day, the collaboration continues, and microfilms continue to be digitized and added to the FRANKLIN collection.
SUCCESS
Given the size of this project, there was a huge demand for volunteer participation. The National Archive's crowdsourcing program, Citizen Archivist, was implemented in order to assist in tagging and transcription of materials. Without a large number of interns and volunteers, this project might not be available today. The fact that the Roosevelt Library's project continues to have the corporate support of IBM, as well as support from the National Archives indicates that FRANKLIN's success. The launch of FRANKLIN was both filmed and posted on youtube. Speakers from each institution in this collaboration passionately spoke about the project, and the audience applause sounded both loud and plentiful.
To this day FRANKLIN is an ongoing project. At its launch, everything had not yet been digitized. I took at look at FRANKLIN myself, and its homepage now states that it houses over 800,000 digitized archival documents as well as 2,500 historical photographs. The variety and amount of information available today is impressive. Records consist of FDR's Map Room Papers, Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations, Presidential Press Conferences, New Deal records, selective Eleanor Roosevelt correspondences, records of the War Refugee Board, Holocaust documents, records on the atomic bomb, and materials pertaining to the Attack on Pearl Harbor.
The FRANKLIN site has a clean and user-friendly interface. The homepage posts answers to questions that many first time users will have about the FRANKLIN database. Users can alphabetically browse the finding aids to all document collections, or they may opt to enter a keyword search. Also, while browsing, one may choose to browse only documents on FDR or only documents on the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. One may even take a peek at Roosevelt's 1941 Christmas list by simply entering "Christmas" into the keyword search field. Users will see that in 1941, FDR gave out 75 bound copies of his presidential campaign speeches, with Eleanor receiving the first copy. When accessing a record, a separate pdf window will open, allowing users to continue searching without closing the document.
There is a separate page for browsing the digital photographs. They are categorized by them, and each theme contains a series of thumbnails which one may hover over for a larger preview of the image. After clicking on a thumbnail, the user is taken to a larger image with captions and other information relevant to the photo. Users can download an image or request a high quality digital scan from the archive. Images may also be shared to social media such as Facebook or Twitter.
The FRANKLIN webpage insists that they will be posting new digitized materials in an ongoing basis. The Roosevelt library also says that in the future, the entirety of FRANKLIN materials will be available to users of the National Archive's online catalog, Online Public Access.
ISSUES
Again, not everything is digitized at this time. In fact, while browsing the finding aids, I noticed links to specific documents. When I clicked on a few of them, I was taken to a blank page, or a simple description of the document but not to the digitized document itself which could be frustrating for the researcher who might end up having to take valuable time to contact the repository in hopes of accessing a specific document. This negates the entire concept of FRANKLIN being a way to make its historical records easily accessible, however, it is still helpful that the finding aids are posted, so that users will at least know that the materials exist.
Another drawback to FRANKLIN is that because some of the digitized folders are so large, it can take several minutes for documents to load, although, in the grand scheme of things, one might consider this a small price to pay for quality digitized primary materials. Because IBM continues to support and fund this project, as well as provide Marist's servers, it is possible that functional improvements will continually be made.
At the launch of FRANKLIN posted on YouTube, Lynn Bassanese, former director of the Roosevelt Library was quoted as saying, "In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt said, '...the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it, and if it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something.' I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, the Roosevelt Library and our amazing partners will continue to be bold and persistent and try new methods as we bring the rich resources of our archives to the world."
CONCLUSION
While there could exist a bias in that the information published that I was able to find on FRANKLIN primarily exists on the Marist website, the Roosevelt Library website, and the YouTube video of the FRANKLIN launch, it does seem to me that this was both a successful and important collaboration between several prominent institutions. Not only was there cooperation between the Roosevelt Library and the National Archives, but there was also a tremendous amount of support from IBM, Marist, and the Roosevelt Institute. Additionally, the 40 minute launch video available on YouTube was a great resource in that one can both see and hear that representatives from each institution felt great pride for participating in the FRANKLIN project. I explored FRANKLIN myself while working on this report and found myself spending more than a few hours getting lost in the materials which is especially impressive as I had never before considered myself much of an FDR enthusiast. The site is incredibly user-friendly, and it would be hard to believe that any inexperienced researcher would be intimidated. It is obvious from FRANKLIN, that much effort and care was put into each and every facet of the project, and future projects between other cultural heritage institutions should look to FRANKLIN as an example of a successful collaboration.
References:
Bassanese, L. (Director). (2013, December 9). FRANKLIN: Access to the FDR Library's Digital Collections. Launch, December 4, 2013 [Video file]. Retrieved February 20, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4KT8umsbKs
FRANKLIN. (2013, December 4). Retrieved February 20, 2016, from http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/collections/franklin/
FRANKLIN Launches. (2013, December 19). Retrieved February 21, 2016, from http://www.marist.edu/publicaffairs/franklin2013.html
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