The Harvard Law School Library is pleased to announce the release of the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Suite. The Suite is comprised of five manuscript collections as well as three image groups. Every attempt was made to digitize as much of each collection as possible and only a small percentage of the Library’s Holmes primary material that was not digitized. The manuscript collections included in the Suite are:
1) The John G. Palfrey Collection of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Papers, 1715-1938
2) Mark DeWolfe Howe Research Materials Related to the Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1858-1968
3) The Edward J. Holmes Collection of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Materials, 1853-1944
4) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Addenda, 1818-1978
5) Letters from Holmes to Lady Castletown Small Manuscript Collection
The key component of the OWH, Jr. Suite is the discovery environment developed by the Library’s Digital Lab and called 3D (Discovery and Delivery of Digital collections). 3D enables a person to search and browse across all eight collections in the Suite from one access point. A search of the over 100,000 digitized documents and over 1,000 images can also be easily refined by the site’s faceted search functions.
The Suite also supports active involvement from users who are offered the opportunity to add tags to items as well as participate in discussions. Visitors to the site are encouraged to increase the accessibility to the collections by adding tags designating topics, names, dates, and locations to items they view. Researchers can also participate in forum discussions about the collections themselves or topics they introduce. By becoming active members of the OWH community, users increase the utility and discoverability of the site.
The Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Suite was made possible by the work of many individuals. The Library’s Digital Lab team of Steve Chapman, Andy Silva, Lindsay Dumas and Craig Smith all developed the 3D software as well as did quality assurance checks on material returning from imaging services. Ed Moloy and Margaret Peachy of the Library’s Historical & Special Collections unit provided the finding aids with the additional metadata necessary for 3D’s optimal functionality.
Post contributed by Edwin Moloy, Curator of Modern Manuscripts
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