National Dataset Collections Project

Over the past 4 years, teams of archivists have digitized portions of National Archives RG195: General Records of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation [HOLC]. Now that the records are available digitally, students and faculty members are working to curate the collection and “datafy” the information contained within. This involves extracting text from digitized 75-year old records, designing queryable databases to house the information, and disseminating the information so it is publicly accessible. With partners from the University of Richmond, John Hopkins University, and Virginia Tech, the Digital Curation Innovation Center plans to georeference the historical maps and display them on top of online maps.

Final Product: National dataset relating to this collection

Skills Exercised:

• Digitization
• Optical Character Recognition
• Data Analytics / Data Management
• Geographical Information System referencing
• Python/SQL Programming