Unlocking the Archives of Displacement and Trauma: Revealing Hidden Patterns of Exploring New Modes of Public Access through Innovative Partnerships and Infrastructure

This paper describes innovative partnerships: university - federal agency (between the University of Maryland and the Office of Innovation at the National Archives and Records Administration - NARA) and university - industry (between the College of Information Studies or “iSchool” at the University of Maryland and Archive Analytics Solutions Ltd.) where we are developing automated scalable workflows that involve digitization, OCR, information extraction, and linking into interactive maps and graph databases, and where digital preservation and archiving are performed using an innovative NoSQL Cassandra-based archival catalog and NetApp-based peta-scale storage infrastructure. This is a contribution to linking sensitive dispersed cultural resources involving the archives of displacement and trauma.