Advance Searching in the Online Adams Catalog

Oh no, today is the last day of the grant! This is the last blog post in all likelihood. What ever will we do? I suppose I should carry on until the clock strikes 4:45.

In the Advanced Search, users have greater ability to find and narrow down results in the Online Adams Catalog.

The biggest feature I think in this search option is the keyword search, which covers nearly every aspect of every catalog entry. As Susan pointed out in May you can search fun words like "Manure" (6 results) but also more serious words like treaty (922 results) or independence (206 results) or peace (717 results) or negotiate (234 results). Searching via Keywords will return results from the text of the author field, the recipient field, the title field, and the notes field.

The Holding Institution search will let you know where original documents are held in other repositories. A pink slip means it is held physically by the MHS, as does a white slip. White slips means it is a letterbook copy. A yellow slip indicates that it is held outside of the MHS either by a research library such as at the Library of Congress, the British Library, or some other place, or held privately.

The Special Categories search option will search for things coded as poems, essays, speeches, etc. This is newly renamed from its former title of Document Type. The is primarily non-correspondence by genre or subject.

For both Holding Institution and Special Categories users are restricted to a dropdown of controlled terms/identifiers. You can use them in conjuction with any of the other search options, so if you want to search for instances where a title or first line of a JQA poem contains the word Moon, type in Moon in the keywords, and then select from special categories Poems, Hyms, Prayers, &c. - JQA. Click search. Voilia: two results. Or, if you wanted to see if JQA ever wrote a poems titled "Life in the Big City" or "Another Day Another Quarter" you could too, but you will be disappointed because he didn't.

Another option in the Advanced Search is the "View a Record by Its ID Number". Each record has a six-digit ID. The first number possible is 010001. The last number right now is into the 43----'s. (There were 42 "reels" of microfilm scanned, and the 43rd reel is for new slips, but they will fit in chronologically in any given search.) Please not that in each case the numbers do not read --9999 before starting over. So there is no 097596, for example. Only in rare cases to the numbers go higher than the --3000's. The numbers associate back to the original slips, to how they were scanned from a microfilm that was made. We're very fond of them. Searching by record number may be most useful if you've done a previous search and noted down the number. Of course you can always have fun with it and type in a random number and see what you get.

Access to the slip file will be from the Adams home page on the MHS website.

Thanks to Mary and Sara and Susan and Brenda and Bill and Jim for making this project so much fun. We hope you enjoy the access to this data and that it enriches your archival experience and research!

Online Adams Catalog: The Public Interface

The public interface created for the Adams Digital Control File project is called the Online Adams Catalog (OAC). It features three ways at getting at the data of the catalog: a Basic Search, an Advanced Search, and the Record Number Search. I'll try to discuss each in a clear way! This blog post will look at the Basic Search.

Using the catalog is pretty easy if you are familiar with using catalogs. We (will) provide some Popular Searches, which will do some of the work for you. We will feature a "Key to Initials" which will help identify Adams family members and the ways in which their names appear throughout the catalog. There will be an "About the catalog" page, too, which should help to define what it includes, what it does and does not do, etc.

In the Basic Search, users will have the option of searching by name (author, recipient, and either), by date, and by documents visible online. However, please note that as the interface is still being developed, some of this information may change. Apologies in advance if this is the case.


Names
For name searching, users will select whether they want to search by author, recipient, or either/or. Once you click the desired option,
users will have the option of selecting from a "Quick List" of major players or by typing in a search box. Following library conventions, type in the last name, first name style. As you begin to type a name, a list of possibilities will display from which you will make your choice. What I mean is if you type in "Jeffer" and pause, you will see in the list that all those names beginning "Jeffer." As we are probably looking for "Jefferson, Thomas," we find easily that he is the third returned name.


Dates
Searching by dates is perhaps a little easier to describe? You'll see two areas to search: a "from" and a "to". You don't have to search by dates, but it is useful if you want to really narrow down your results. There are some tricky aspects to date searching though!

In the catalog, many documents were written over the course of time. Examples would be a diary or letterbooks, which can contain documents that can cover years. But letters, themselves, were sometimes written over many days, if not weeks or longer. We call these span dates. In the date search area, you can eliminate results that span beyond a specific date range. An example might best illustrate this aspect:

I searched for instances where John Quincy Adams was either an author or recipient of a document in the Adams Papers within the date range of January 1775 and December 1815. This returned 11,266 results. By selecting the option to eliminate span dates, the results were lowered to 11,233.Not the best example, not the most reasonable or intelligent search criteria, but it does show that it removes some documents. A very brief look at the results found that by restricting the query to remove span dates, an essay composed between 11 February 1778-March 1824 was removed.


Documents Online
Selecting the third option in the Basic Search will return results for which an online version of the actual document is available. It should be stated now, VERY LOUD AND CLEAR, that not all the documents for which there is a catalog record are available online. Most of the catalog is not available online, in fact. But when something is online there are options to view it. The kinds of things you can expect to see online are transcriptions of printed volumes, scanned images of printed volumes, scanned images of manuscripts or microfilm, and transcriptions of scanned images of manuscripts and microfilm. I think that covers everything!

This search limiter is one way to go about finding them! For a test, I searched for documents originated by John Adams where Thomas Jefferson was the recipient. I selected the option to only return results that were online. I got two results. (By removing the online option, I see that there are actually 379 documents.) The first is a letter dated 26 May 1777 (record number 012746). On the slip, the right hand area will give you information about where the document can be found (in a printed source, in an online display, etc.) and then there is option to view it.

The catalog will go live in early July. The next post will discuss the Advance searching options, which as the name suggests includes everything you can do in a Basic Search...and more!

Names Clean-up in the People Database

The most recent task assigned to me to complete as we prepare to launch the Adams Papers Digital catalog was to review instances were names we assigned as attributes (e.g. adams-john1735 for John Adams (a.k.a. JA) appeared in the XML code, but not in the People database. This is part one of two, the second part being instances were people appear in the database but do not appear in the attributes in the XML.

This is another one of those combination's of human and computer errors, some of which were unavoidable (computer) and some of which happened because of how mundane some of the work was (human).

The attributes that needed seeing to was 1200 strong, and in printed form stretched to 110 pages. (Before you think we're total idiots, this represents approximately 5-6% of the database which means we got 94-95% right. On a ten point grading scale that is a solid A! Sheepishly we realize mistakes happen but anticipating negative criticism about the work we did we wanted to try to spin it positively.)

We did two queries to produce the data. The first query produced the faulty attributes and the slip ID number in which the attribute was contained. For the results that came about in the second run, we included within double-quotes the name associated with the faulty attribute. It gave a little insight into what we could expect before searching the database and editing the code.

Some typical instances looked like this:

a. [extract]-monroe] 160017 - "to Sec. of State [James Monroe] [extract]" | 160043 "to Sec. of State [James Monroe] [extract]"
b. bourne-sylvanus? 072781 - ""to Mr. Sylvanus? Bourne"
c. henry-laurens 031911 - "to Henry Laurens"
d. nicolay-albery-h 341282 - "to Albert H Nicolay"
e. palfrey-john 340735 - "John G. Palfrey" | 341083 - "John G. Palfrey"


There were a number of consistencies as to the errors that were made that were determined quickly when cleaning up the data. In some instances the attribute was valid, but had not been entered into the database. While frustrating, this was an easy fix and was most likely the product of human error. A second reason was due to a typographical error in the XML attribute that was not present in the attribute for that person in the people database. And the reverse, where there was a typo in the people database but the attribute was actually correct. Typographical errors includes transpositions of letters (examples c and d). A third possibility was that in the transformation process which took place in Level 1, the attribute was inaccurately reviewed (examples a and b above). And in the above it should be evident that punctuation and other marks like [ ) ? . were not allowed in the attribute; . Another kind of thing we saw was were attributes in the XML were not as complete as in the database, and the opposite (example e).

The fixes for the above examples should be relatively easy to make yourselves:

a. monroe-james (remove [], add james)
b. bourne-sylvanus (remove ?)
c. laurens-henry (flip first and last names)
d. nicolay-albert-h (typo in albert corrected)
e. palfrey-john-gorham (added middle name)

In addition to checking the slip, we also had to check the database for each name (unless it was a prominent figure). The back-end view for the Adams Papers editors (and us), allows for tabbed browsing of the digital control file. I have not really seen the public interface but imagine this might be a similar feature.

We did not keep count of the number of names added but there were quite a few. In the process we were able to clean up a number of bad attributes that were in the database and in some cases merge or separate people based on a close inspection of names, dates, etc. For example in correcting some of the slips for William Cunningham Jr. I discovered that his attribute should be "cunningham-william0" where as the majority of them were just "cunningham-william", which is the attribute for his father, William Sr. These have all been fixed now so that the users of the digital control file will get the respect they expect when searching for these people.

We will re-run the query in a few days to ensure that every instance was seen to accurately. Let's pretend this was the case, for if any were missed, I won't tell you about it!

The other side to this clean-up, whereby we'll run a query to determine in the database where attributes exist that do not appear in the XML, is more straightforward...those attributes will be deleted from the database.

Also going on has been Beta testing of the public interface. Susan and I were invited to sit in on a meeting yesterday about how that testing went, what some of the feedback was, etc. So I'll post a bit about the public interface next time. The project comes to a close on 30 June 2011 so blogging might slow down - if it doesn't stop outright - after that date. I don't want to turn this into a Brokeback Mountain "I can't quit you" kind of moment, but the reality is is that once the funds stops, so does the blog!

Almost there...

The end of the Adams slip file conversion project is fast approaching, and the digital catalog will be launched shortly. For some of us here at the Massachusetts Historical Society, it's been all Adams all the time.

The MHS, of course, already offers a variety of online resources related to the Adams family, from digitized letters with transcriptions to digital editions of print volumes. The Adams Electronic Archive contains images and transcriptions of over 1,000 letters between John and Abigail Adams, as well as John's diaries and autobiography. The voluminous diaries of John Quincy Adams have also been digitized, and his line-a-day diaries are the subject of our very popular JQA Twitter project. The Adams Papers Digital Editions reproduce 32 of the print volumes published by the Adams Papers Editorial Project, complete with footnotes and intertextual links.

Navigating through all of these pages can be confusing, and we're hoping the digital catalog will help to mitigate that problem and function as a kind of "clearing house" for Adams researchers. Because the catalog contains item-level descriptive data for every known Adams family manuscript, it's the perfect vehicle for linking to individual digitized documents and online transcriptions, wherever they currently "live." Public researchers, as well as Adams editors, will be able to retrieve a specific record, click on a link, and--voila!--read the document itself.

So, to that end, I spent the last several days adding links to hundreds of individual records using web forms in the dynamic interface. Still to be tackled are links to all the diaries of John and John Quincy Adams. Of course, only a fraction of the items described in the catalog are available in digital format, so it will be important to make that clear. Web developer Bill Beck will design the public interface so that users can limit their search to only those items available online.

Saltonstall as "Adams Lite": Tastes Great, Less Filling

Mr. [John Quincy] Adams is now the rising sun, and of course finds many idolaters. You can hardly conceive the strange appearance he makes--so cold--so unbending rigid muscles amidst such smiles, such good humor, gaiety--and among his own guests too. It seems a miracle that he has ever been chosen President of the U. States. Is it an invincible proof of his eminent merit, or the result of a singular concurrence of fortunate circumstances? Mrs. A. is the very antipode--if you will allow the term to be applied to a lady....And I fear that she has a Courtier's hart [sic]--or like him is heartless.

(Letter from Leverett Saltonstall to his wife Mary, 24 Feb. 1825)

This little teaser is just my way of introducing the Saltonstall family papers slip file project, another grant-funded paper-to-digital conversion modeled on the Adams family catalog. We here at the Massachusetts Historical Society have come to call the Saltonstall slip file "Adams Lite" because it is both much smaller (only 3,000 slips) and much more straightforward than its unwieldy counterpart. Both catalogs consist of a series of paper slips describing individual documents: author, recipient, date, place, length, etc. But unlike Adams, this slip file describes papers in a single collection at the MHS: the Saltonstall family papers, Ms. N-2232. The entire data set fits in a single xml file, and all of the information has been entered, controlled, and verified by one person. And lastly, because publication of the Saltonstall papers was completed years ago, this database requires only one static interface--basically a searchable item-level collection guide. The Adams Papers Editorial Project, on the other hand, is ongoing, so that database requires two interfaces: one static, for public use; the other dynamic, to be edited by Adams Papers staff.

The Saltonstall database fulfills a requirement of the original Adams slip file grant, awarded in the fall of 2008, which specified that that project would serve as a prototype for similar projects. The Saltonstall conversion has been in the works since the beginning of 2010, and many MHS staff members have contributed to the project. Laura Lowell processed the Saltonstall family collection, and our digital team of Nancy Heywood, Laura Wulf, and Peter Steinberg have digitized, transcribed, and marked up many individual items for presentation on the web. I was responsible for building the database, using the Adams slip file as a model.

Mary Claffey's work on the Adams slip file laid most of the groundwork for me. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I literally copied and pasted her schema and revised her tags to suit the needs of the Saltonstall family papers, scaling it down by deleting unnecessary elements and adding or repurposing others. Our web developer, Bill Beck, is designing an attractive and user-friendly interface, also modeled on the Adams slip file, and Laura Lowell's collection guide to the Saltonstall family papers will link to the database. It was a lot of fun to work with so many other members of the department; everyone brought their own strengths to the project.

The Saltonstall family, like the Adams family, is chock full of prominent and interesting people, spanning several generations. Leverett, Sr. (quoted above) was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Massachusetts Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, and he served as the first mayor of Salem, Mass. His wife, Mary Elizabeth (Sanders) Saltonstall, was the daughter of Thomas Sanders, a well-known Salem merchant. Leverett's great-grandson, also named Leverett, was the governor of Massachusetts during World War II and a U.S. senator for over 20 years.

Keep an eye on the MHS website for further information about both projects.

The Goldenrod Affair

In the Adams Paper slip file, the chronological run is considered the master and it is that which was microfilmed and used to create the digital control file. In adding document types, which was based on an equally impressive alphabetical run (which includes, for the prominent Adamses, a select list of subjects) it was determined that some slips were present in the alpha run and not in the chronological run. These were goldenrod slips, which are used in house as cross-reference slips to connect people, places, subjects, correspondence, etc. Probably a lot more. The current task to which I have been assigned is going through the slips in the Alphabetical run and identifying those slips of goldenrod color that were not also present in the chronological run. The process includes making copies of those slips not found and then adding them to the Digital Control File.

Before this, when creating a new slip one would find a slip of similar color, copy it, and then edit to suite. Now, though, we have a new option in the interface that enables us to create a new slip from scratch. A most helpful part of the tool.

Another project that is ongoing at the time - thought not being completed by the contributing members of this blog - is that updates and changes to existing slips is taking place. There is a big three-ringed binder of these changes. A process that took heaps of time in its analog format is now being completed quite a bit more swiftly. This is not always easy and has involved some collaboration between the Adams staff and the control file gurus, some instruction, and the detection & correction of bugs.

Fun with searching

When editing individual records in the Adams slip file, it helps to use a unique keyword or phrase to limit your search results and pinpoint the exact slip you're looking for. Case in point: I was adding document types to records and came across a slip containing the phrase "bill for manure." I typed that phrase into my search box, confident I would retrieve only the specific record I was looking for. Imagine my surprise when I retrieved four! All four bills date from the year 1880 and belong to Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886). Expanding my search to just the word "manure," I found another bill, which I hadn't initially retrieved because of the variant phrasing on the slip. A sixth result was a letter from Charles' grandfather John Adams to Cotton Tufts, dated 80 years earlier, about a funeral oration for George Washington. John then goes on: "The transition to be sure from such a subject to my uncultivated business is very abrupt. But I must say a few words....I hope Porter has carted or shedded all the manure on the Hill....I wish you would contract with Carter to bring me up an hundred Loads."

Image of Charles Francis Adams from the Portraits of American Abolitionists photograph collection at the MHS.

Accessing Accessions

Now that encoding is complete and clean-up/quality control well underway, members of the Adams Papers slip file staff have been working on enriching the information in the database in a variety of ways. One way is by providing links to the many other Adams resources already available online. I recently added links in the Accessions Database to collection guides online at the MHS website.

The papers described in the slip file represent all known Adams documents held by institutions around the world. Included are Adams-related items in many different collections at the MHS that have come to us over the years. In the Accessions Database, these documents are listed by accession number, along with the name of the collection in which they can be found. So, for example, if a collection of John Doe papers was given to the MHS, and those papers contained some letters from, say, Abigail Adams to Mrs. Doe, each Adams letter would be assigned a unique number in the Accessions Database, and the name "John Doe papers" would appear alongside those numbers.

Since they were acquired, guides to many of our collections have been encoded and posted on our website. (We currently have over 330 guides to manuscript collections online.) My task consisted of searching the Accessions Database for MHS collections with online guides and adding links to those entries. This information can now be pulled into the Adams Papers catalog. When an individual record is retrieved, a sidebar with the heading "More about this slip" includes the name of the institution holding that item and, if that institution is the MHS, a handy-dandy link to the relevant online guide. Adams Papers editors can then use the guide to pinpoint an item's specific location, down to box and folder.

For those papers in collections without online guides, I added the manuscript call number to the notes field, just to make it a little easier to track down an item in our stacks.

Now, this job turned out to be fairly challenging because: 1) many collection names have changed over the years, 2) Adams editors often abbreviated the names they were familiar with, and 3) collections can have very similar names. (Just by way of illustration, the MHS holds separate collections called: the Henry Cabot Lodge collection, the Henry Cabot Lodge papers, the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers, and the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers II!) Not having the time to search through so many boxes by hand, I did the best I could to identify which items belonged to which collections. If a specific author or recipient wasn't listed in a catalog record or collection guide, I used other clues for confirmation, like bulk dates, subject headings, or acquisition, as well as the information on the slip itself.

And so we press on....

Conjectural Dates

Assigning the document types concluded about a week ago. The last document type tackled was JQA's poems, which were many. Some late decisions were made as we did this; the original slips for some document types - like JQA's poems - were filed in two ways: both chronologically and alphabetically. In the digital control file, there is no need for this kind of dual-classification. The headings were brought over verbatim and we realized that we could get rid of one altogether and rename the other so that the document type, for JQA's poetry, reads just simply "JQA-Poems, Hymns, Prayers, &c." You can see the "before" of this in the image below in the "Document Types & Names" post from 11 March 2011.

We'll continue to fine tune some of the Document Types as we go along but it feels great to have that part of the paper slips behind us. The web developer added to the search feature a way to narrow your search to each Document Type, so this is an added way of getting at the information which you will enjoy once it is rolled out.

For now, we're working through the conjectural dates of which there are 6,338 records. What this entails is reviewing each entry to make sure that the most up-to-date and accurate information is listed in the date field. Dates were reviewed in Level 1 encoding along with many other things. Unfortunately, some of the dates that needed updating based on the proofing were skipped and now it falls on my shoulders to review the records, fixing them up right. There are other reasons why the dates came over from the XML but won't get into for fear of seeming too defensive. It's a combination, I think, of human and technological reasons though. I've gone through 1,900 as of this post so while it doesn't seem like I'm making progress I am. It feels very "corporate" as I'm moving papers from one pile into another.

The conjectural dates exist for a number of reasons including undated papers, mis-dated papers, etc. For these items the ace staff of the Adams Papers do their level best to assign as accurate a date as possible based on research, expertise, etc. Over the generations of editorial staff, some slips have gone through several updates and now, now is the time for correcting it all so that when you get access to it you can be confident you're looking at great, solid, right information.

There are not 6,338 errors, mind you, and fortunately I do go through pages at a time where everything is synced up.

Document Types & Names

At the moment, we are working on entering "Document Types" into the database. This is a hybrid part of the project where we are working both with the slips and interface. See images below. We have completed JA's document types and are working now on JQA. I skipped AA as I couldn't find her slips.














At the same time, the good people in the Adams papers are doing preliminary work on cleaning up the names database. This involved printing out the entire list of names and looking particularly at the Adamses, Smiths, etc. for duplicates and then seeing which can be merged or which can be better identified. Of course our by now classic example is Thomas Baker Johnson who had at least three entries (johnson-t-b; johnson-thomas-b; and johnson-thomas-baker). They have all been fixed in that the attributes are all "johnson-thomas-baker" now. For now, "Johnson, T. B." and "Johnson, Thomas B." still appear in the drop down list of names when searching slips as these forms of his name do appear on the physical slips. However if one were to select these options they would get a return of 0 results. Perhaps it will be worth it to remove them altogether?

I Killed John Quincy Adams, or, I was only doing my job

In September 2010, while performing encoding level 2 tasks on reel 33 (covering the years 1846-1851) I killed John Quincy Adams. I was only doing my job! His passing was solemnly marked with a beer after work. We remember JQA in part for his voluminous diaries and correspondence; his poetry; and his service to the United States. This post will look at some milestones and metrics including JQA's first letters to his parents and wife and the last letters he sent and received. Please keep in mind it relates only to those items present in the Adams Control File; and some of the numbers might change a bit as we clean up the data.

John Quincy Adams was born on 11 July 1767. Today, 23 February, is the anniversary of his death, 163 years ago in 1848.

The first letter he wrote held in the Adams Family Papers is to his cousin Elizabeth Cranch (Mrs. Jacob P. Norton), circa 1773.

The first letter to his father, John Adams, dates to 13 October 1774. The first letter to his mother Abigail Adams was written from Paris on 12 April 1778. The first letter JQA sent to his future wife Louisa Catherine Johnson (LCA) was from The Hague on 2 June 1796. In all, the MHS has (or knows about) 619 letters from JQA to LCA; and there were 451 the other way, from LCA to JQA.

The first letter JQA received was from his father, written from Philadelphia on 18 April 1776. The first letter JQA received from his mother was written from Braintree on 21 January 1781. The first letter JQA received from Louisa Catherine Johnson was from London, dated 4 July 1796: America's 20th birthday. In all, JQA received 18,475 letters.

His last dated poem was attributed to ca. 21 February 1848 as is titled "In days of yore the Poets pen ...." This poem was eventually published in Poems (New York, 1848, p. 108) under title of "Written in an Album." Indeed, his last dated documents seemed to have all been poetry.

The last letter he received whilst alive was a two page letter on 13 February 1848, from Willis Baldwin of Monroe Co., N. Y. JQA did receive one letter following his death, a four pager dated 29 February 1848 from Boston, co-authored by Edward Brooks and Dr. John Bigelow.

The last letters he is known to have sent were on 4 and 6 February 1848. On 4 February he sent a 1 page letter to Alexander Baring, the Lord Ashburton, from Washington; this is a letterbook copy. On 6 February, he sent a 1 page letter to Julia Raymond which included the poem "Fair Lady! when at thy request These fingers trace my name..."

The original slip files were scanned onto 42 "reels." JQA's attribute "adams-john-quincy1767" appears as an author, recipient or in the title field 47,581 times in 40 of the reels. He does not appear to be in reels 37 (the year 1863) and 40 (the years 1867-1870). This averages out to 1189.525 times his attribute appears per reel in one of the aforementioned fields.

JQA's initials - which can appear nearly anywhere, any number of times in a single record - appears 57,949 times in all 42 reels, or an average of 1379.7380952380952380952380952381 times per reel.

Supporting Databases, Part 2

A project as large and complicated as the Adams Papers slip file conversion requires vast amounts of documentation to run smoothly. On January 10, Peter Steinberg wrote about the People and Places databases--two of the supporting databases we've used to ensure our data is consistent, to reproduce the information currently available to Adams Papers editors, and to enhance the finished product. In addition to the People and Places databases, we've built Institutions and Accessions databases to track the physical locations of individual items in the catalog.

The Institutions database lists all institutions known to hold Adams family manuscripts. As you can imagine, it's a very diverse group of libraries, historical societies, archives, museums, and other institutions. In addition to the MHS, Adams family papers can be found at the Adams National Historic Park, the Boston Athenaeum, Harvard University, Yale University, the American Philosophical Society, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Public Record Office of the UK National Archives, the Nationaal Archief in the Hague, and many, many other places. Some institutions hold a large number of Adams-related manuscripts, others only a few.

I spent some time recently adding links in the database to each institution's website, which turned out to be both more challenging and more interesting that I expected. Many institutions have changed names and/or locations since the Adams Papers editorial project began decades ago, so finding the right URL sometimes took a little digging. Some of these changes are well known: for example, the British Library split from the British Museum in the 1970s. But did you know that the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, De., used to be called the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library? Mystic Seaport (Mystic, Conn.) was founded as the Marine Historical Association; the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., was the Columbia Historical Society; the New Bedford Whaling Museum was the Kendall Whaling Museum; and the Cincinnati Historical Society was the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio.

The Adamses were a well-traveled family, so many international institutions hold Adams-related documents, including the Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres (Paris), Koninklijk Huisarchief (the Hague), Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossii (Moscow), and Kungliga Biblioteket (Stockholm). Obviously, these names were even trickier!

This URL search gave me a chance to look at the wide variety of websites institutions use to showcase their collections. Many universities, of course, have excellent sites, but other institutions surprised me. I found the British Library website confusing and difficult to use, but some small organizations, like the Connecticut Historical Society and the Oklahoma Historical Society, have very attractive and user-friendly websites.

The Accessions database complements the Institutions database by allowing Adams editors to search for the locations of specific items by accession code and item number, rather than by institution. One of our goals with these supporting databases has been to combine all the editors' documentation (now housed in several separate binders in the Adams Papers offices) into a more efficient one-stop shop. Links to online resources provide some added value that has been missing from the traditional paper file.

John Adams by the numbers

John Adams died on 4 July 1826 at the ripe old age of 90. His death falls slightly more than halfway through the Adams Papers slip file, but when we reached this date in Encoding Level 2 last summer, we felt we'd marked an important milestone in the project. So in honor of John Adams, I've compiled some statistics related to him.

As of now, John Adams appears in the database as an author 13,943 times. He appears as a recipient 11,782 times. These numbers reflect original letters, retained letterbook copies of outgoing correspondence, and other documents. While the MHS holds the vast majority of these items, the slip file lists all known Adams family manuscripts, including those held by other institutions and those in private hands.

The earliest extant letter from John was written at Worcester on 1 Sep. 1755 to Nathan Webb. The first letter John received was written by Richard Cranch in Oct. 1756.

Correspondence between John and Abigail Adams accounts for 1,376 records in the database. Ironically, although Abigail often complained of how little John wrote, he wrote many more letters to her than she did to him--an impressive 912 to her 464 (including letterbook copies). John's first letter to his future wife was written 4 Oct. 1762, two years before their marriage, and her first letter to him was written 11 Aug. 1763.

According to the slip file, John Adams exchanged 662 letters with his "frenemy" Thomas Jefferson--376 to him and 286 from him. Their correspondence spans almost 50 years, beginning with Jefferson's letter from Williamsburg, Va. on 16 May 1777 and ending with Adams' of 17 Apr. 1826, less than three months before the day both men died.

John Adams wrote his last letter on 22 June 1826 to Roger C. Weightman, at that time the mayor of Washington, D.C. Four days later, the last letter to John was written by Ebenezer Clough. It was one of only three letters Clough ever wrote to the former president.

Supporting Databases, Part 1

This sounds like an Oscar category...And the nominees for Best Supporting Database in a Digital Conversion Project are: Accessions. Institutions. People. Places.

The supporting databases in the project allow us to regularize and make a consistent way in which to store and retrieve information. At the present time, there are four supporting databases: Accessions, Institutions, People, Places. There are additional supporting documents that we created and used such the Microfilm Conversion Chart. Fellow Adams Slip File encoder and blogger Susan Martin worked with the Accessions and Institutions databases as well as the Microfilm Conversion Chart and MHS Collection Codes, so she will write on them.

As mentioned in the post on 15 December 2010, at that time the People database contained 19,454 names. This number will fluctuate a bit as digital control file staff and Adams Papers editors identify duplicate entries and/or clarify & identify more fully those records for which staff have more information. Occasionally also we find names skipped during encoding level 2; this generally was the result of the density or complexity of a record.

The Places database was the first to be built and populated during Level 1 Encoding. In Level 2, while not a focus, we took the opporutnity to review attributes and perform basic data clean-up if necessary. The Places database contains 3,090 records: from Abbeville to Zwolle.

The fields we populated in Level 1 in the Places database are location, city, state, country, and notes. The location field is the controlled form of the entry - the attribute. Generally the first time a city appeared it received a one word attribute: "quincy", "tallahassee", and "athol" for example. However, once the country expanded, we were left with the task of differentiating between places with the same name in different states and/or countries. A good example is Burlington. We have eight different records for Burlington: "burlington", "burlington-county", "burlington-ia", "burlington-ma", "burlington-me", "burlington-nj", "burlington-ny", and "burlington-vt". We assigned the fullest known attribute to distinguish one from the other. However, sometimes the address listed simply says Burlington. In these instances it was not always possible to determine if it was the Burlington in Massachusetts or some other state.

This is a long way of saying we did the best we could with the information we had. As with the People database, the Adams Papers editors can use their expertise to help solidly define and identify a place if needed.