Project Narrative

This interdisciplinary research enhances research efforts in each of the disciplines participating in the project, but it is also of value to other disciplines. This project is a pilot effort aimed at fulfilling the affirmations of the Freedmen's Bureau Preservation Act of 2000 by preserving the records of the Freedmen's Bureau by using:

Secondly, this effort positively impacts a growing area of research into enhancing and extending the current World Wide Web (WWW) into what is called the "Semantic Web". The key idea is that the content of the WWW will be made useable by computers (i.e. software agents) that can understand the semantics (meaning) of the knowledge on the WWW and thus perform a variety of useful tasks for users. The research team will focus on finding effective ways of applying research results in artificial intelligence and Semantic Web technology to revolutionize user access to large volumes of digitized historical artifacts.

Thirdly, this effort assists the University in becoming a participant in the on-going development of systems to store, organize and disseminate information and knowledge in digital form. This research will synergistically combine modern Web-based technologies and contemporary research in knowledge-based systems, computer science and digital library science. Specifically, this research investigates and demonstrates the application of cutting-edge results from the areas of knowledge acquisition, Semantic Web technology, innovative imaging and historical archival/indexing methods to create a "knowledge utility".

To achieve these goals, we proposed to develop a Web-based knowledge utility system that we call the Advanced Knowledge Acquisition and Dissemination System (AKADS). An interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, library scientists, historians, historical archivists, and visualization experts have been assembled to contribute intellectually and direct the research and software development for AKADS. The team's computer scientists will be required to contribute skill in systems engineering and artificial intelligence to the project. The project will utilize the expertise of historians and historical archivists to provide domain knowledge and guidance in the analysis of users' needs. Library scientists will contribute domain knowledge and assistance in standardized ontology building. Artistic skill and expertise in graphic visualization will be required to assist in the design of all user interfaces and visual abstractions (e.g. the Web site) that will assist system users in communication with AKADS. Research is currently underway in collaboration with the Semantic Web Research Group in the MIND LAB University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies to examine knowledge acquisition methods that will be applicable to acquiring expert knowledge related to historical artifacts.

We proposed to obtain a number of different historical artifacts from other archival projects within and outside Howard University. We then represented the associated metadata (i.e. data about data) along with images/transcriptions of these artifacts. To make these knowledge resources available in the form of "digital objects"; on the WWW we designed and developed knowledge-based programs (intelligent agents) that acquire the semantics of these artifacts from domain experts. These intelligent agents, deployed via Web services, processed the information and exchanged the results with client programs that we developed to work on users' computers. This research will help usher in significant new functionality for users and contribute to the Semantic Web by contributing to computers becoming better able to process and "understand" the nature and meaning of the Web pages that they merely display and search at present by keyword.

Initially, AKADS will support knowledge acquisition and dissemination of the records of the Freedmen's Bureau. The result will be a technological infrastructure to make the Freedmen's Bureau records available on the WWW with associated tools to facilitate the interpretation and use of these records by researchers. The development and use of AKADS will progressively integrate the Freedmen's Bureau records and other historical archives into the growing Semantic Web. Further, AKADS will permit unprecedented sharing of the task of transcription and interpretation of the Freedmen's Bureau records among researchers worldwide while also making possible linkages of the documents' content with other relevant Web-based data.