John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Wins C.F.W. Coker Award from Society of American Archivists
Press Release · Monday, June 20, 2011

Press Release
June 20, 2011

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Wins C.F.W. Coker Award from Society of American Archivists

Washington, DC…The National Archives John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is being awarded the C.F.W. Coker Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) for its digital archive that incorporates collection-level descriptions and increases online accessibility. The award will be presented during a ceremony on August 26, 2011, at ARCHIVES 360°: 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Chicago.

The C.F.W. Coker Award recognizes finding aids, finding aid systems, innovative development in archival description, or descriptive tools that enable archivists to produce more effective finding aids. To merit consideration for the award, nominees must set national standards, represent a model for archives description, or otherwise have a substantial impact on national descriptive practice.

“The John F. Kennedy Presidential Digital Archive and the ‘Access to a Legacy’ project are models for archival repositories interested in large-scale digitization and description projects,” said the SAA Awards Committee.

The redesigned website includes a user-friendly single search interface that provides access to both digitized and undigitized holdings with advanced search functionality, including suggested searching and faceted searching and browsing. This project relies on standard descriptive practices, but uses a traditionally corporate digital asset management tool as its all-purpose archival management system. Visit the site today, www.jfklibrary.org.

Established in 1984, the award honors SAA Fellow C.F.W. Coker. Previous recipients include: North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center; World War II: Guide to Records Relating to U.S. Military Participation;The Archivists Toolkit™; Greg Bradsher of the National Archives and Records Administration; The Walt Whitman Archive; and the Online Archive of California.

# # #

For press information, contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at (202) 357-5300.

Connect with Us on:
Twitter:   http://www.twitter.com/archivesnews
Facebook:   USNationalArchives

11-145