Text Analysis of Archival Finding Aids Collection Scoping and Beyond

• Published in: Information technology and libraries Vol. 43; no. 4
• Main Authors: Bahde, Anne, Key, Cara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Library Association 01.12.2024
• Subjects: Computational linguistics; Language processing; Natural language interfaces; Natural language processing; Natural resources; United States; United States
• ISSN: 0730-9295; 2163-5226
• DOI: 10.5860/ital.v43i4.17065

Archival repositories must be strategic and selective in deciding what collections they will acquire and steward. Careful collection stewards balance many factors, including ongoing resource needs and future research use. They ensure new acquisitions build upon existing topical strengths in the repository’s holdings and reassess these existing strengths regularly through multiple lenses. In this study, we examine the suitability of text analysis as a method for analyzing collection scope strengths across a repository’s physical archival holdings. We apply a tool for text analysis called Leximancer to analyze a corpus of archival finding aids to explore topical coverage. Leximancer results were highly aligned with the baseline subject heading analysis that we performed, but the concepts, themes, and co-occurring topic pairs surfaced by Leximancer suggest areas of collection strength and potential focus for new acquisitions. We discuss the potential applications of text analysis for internal library use including collection development, as well as potential implications for wider description, discovery, and access. Text analysis can accurately surface topical strengths and directly lead to insights that can inform future acquisition decisions and archival collection development policies.