University of Virginia

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia will conduct initial planning and early-stage development of Connecting Presidential Collections, a digital resource that will provide open access to archival collections on, about, or related to all the presidents of the United States. Surveys conducted by the Miller Center confirm what most scholars have long suspected: The vast majority of important presidential collections remain untapped, unused, and hidden. The Miller Center will convene a Steering Committee of experts in digital scholarship—professional historians, archivists, and librarians who have demonstrated professional expertise—for a two-day summit meeting in fall 2011. Participants from numerous archives holding presidential materials will consider and establish project strategies and objectives, compatible content management standards, digital tools and best practices, and other requirements of a future portal to search across multiple libraries and archives.