Exploring Archival Collections with Interactive Visualisation

In the age of digitisation, the question of how best to access digital collections is increasingly urgent. This paper presents a recent research project funded by the National Archives of Australia, investigating the interactive visualisation of an archival collection. The project focused specifically on providing a sense of large-scale structure, revealing patterns and relationships within the collection. The results of the project show firstly that visualisation can be a highly effective tool in representing the complex structures of digital collections; and further, that it has significant potential as a dynamic interface to the collection itself