Focused Search in Digital Archives

We present a system description for an archival information system with three different approaches to gain online access to digital archives created in the metadata standard Encoded Archival Description (EAD). We show that an aggregation-based system can be developed on archival data using XML Information Retrieval (XML IR). We describe the different stages and components, such as the indexing of the digital finding aids in an XML database, the subsequent querying and retrieval of information from that database, and the eventual delivery of that information to the users in a contextual interface.