Constituent Mail Analysis Project Emory University Center for Technology Initiatives IASSIST 2003.

Constituent Mail Analysis Project

Emory UniversityCenter for Technology Initiatives

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• Volume

• Filing system (filed by system-assigned document number)

• Low content to volume ratio: more useful in the aggregate than as individual instances

• closed until 2017

Access Issues:

Correspondence Metadata

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Archivist F. Gerald Ham:

“[Correspondence management records] possess great advantages for our users. The information they contain can be rearranged, aggregated, compared, and subjected to statistical tests without the laborious tasks of sample selection, data collection, coding, and data entry.”

“Archival Choices: Managing the Historical Record in an Age of Abundance,” American Archivist 47, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 19.

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<CTI/>The Center for Technology

Initiatives

Enabling the Emory Libraries to take a leadership role in developing distinctive and original text, data, and image collections in partnership with members of the

Emory Community to support teaching and research.

A partnership of:

The Lewis H. Beck Center for Electronic Texts and Services

chaucer.library.emory.edu

The Electronic Data Centereinstein.library.emory.edu

The Special Collections & Archives Digital Archiveweb.library.emory.edu/Special/digitalarchive.html

• Top Fifteen Subtopics by Month

• Opinions expressed in the mail received regarding the 1991 Gulf War

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CMAP SECTIONS:

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List of Approved Response Paragraphs:

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There are some irregularities in the data…

• no controls over the information entered

• few required fields

• some inconsistency in topic/subtopic usage

• data loss during transition between systems

• subtopics changed as an issue developed

• doesn’t capture outsourced mail

…but this is the information Nunn and his staff used to gauge constituent opinions.

User evaluation

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Next Steps:

Add functionality:• ability to analyze the usage of particular

approved paragraphs• maps for Gulf War opinions

Add data:• additional topical data subsets • for other Senators