Advanced Information Delivery System for the Abraham Lincoln Writings.

Presenter: Michal Ondrejcek, NCSA
Authors: Michal Ondrejcek, Rob Kooper, and Peter Bajcsy; Collaborators: M. Casares, Piotr Wendykier, D.W. Stowell, A. Parga, K. Franklin, Stacy McDermott, Vernon Burton

2008 Microsoft e-Science Workshop
Indianapolis, IN, December 7 - 12, 2008
poster presentation

This work presents a virtual observatory of the Abraham Lincoln writings. Many of the Lincoln correspondence papers and legal documents have been digitized, pre-processed and annotated for public viewing. However, there are challenges in delivering the information to the general public due to the large number of documents, very large volume of digital files, lack of metadata, heterogeneous pieces of information and need for services such as searching and transcription.

We have prototyped an advanced information system that delivers Lincoln writings together with historical maps, contemporary Google maps, and Lincoln Log metadata, and other types of information to provide a multi-dimensional view of Lincoln’s life. The novelty of our work is in designing the system that provides such a unique multidimensional view of Lincoln’s life by combining technologies needed for building virtual observatories.