Connecting Archival Collections: The Social Networks and Archival Context Project

This paper describes the Social Networks and Archival Context project, built on a database of merged Encoded Archival Context - Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) records derived from Encoded Archival Description (EAD) records held by the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the Northwest Digital Archives, and Virginia Heritage, combined with information from name authority files from the Library of Congress (Library of Congress Name Authority File), OCLC Research (The Virtual International Authority File), and the Getty Vocabulary Program (Union List of Artist Names). The database merges information from each instance of an individual name found in the EAD resources, along with variant names, biographical notes and their topical descriptions. The SNAC prototype interface makes this information searchable and browseable while retaining links to the various data sources.