ANN ARBOR—Michigan history comes to life at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library thanks to innovative approaches to presenting archival content online.

These approaches were developed by U-M’s Elizabeth Yakel, an associate professor in the Archives and Records Management Program at U-M’s School of Information, and her students.

Through the coordination of the library, Yakel and students, the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collection commemorates the contributions of Michigan soldiers in Russia during World War I through an interactive Web site at polarbears.si.umich.edu.

The site features digitized collections on the history of this American military intervention in Russia, one in which Michigan troops found themselves fighting Bolshevik revolutionaries for months after the Armistice ended fighting in France.

“The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections Project is the first example of rethinking archival finding aids to provide better access to primary sources on the Web,” Yakel said.” The project makes it easy for researchers to discover interrelations and links between various Polar Bear collections, something that was very difficult to do before.”

Users can comment on collections and individual items as well as search others’ comments. Already visitors have created user biographies explaining their background and interest in this historical topic. They have provided new information about the soldiers involved and linked to their own Polar Bear related Web pages. Archivists and reference archivists may use the comments to answer user questions or offer research advice or help. The comments capture and preserve the knowledge of archivists and researchers, something not possible with a traditional archival setting.

Yakel acknowledges that the site continues to be a work in progress, one that will expand and grow with innovative features such as a” virtual call slip” and the” tagging” feature that lets users assign their own one-word descriptions as a means of categorizing and organizing content. While users now can bookmark items of interest on the site, in the future they may be able to annotate and share such bookmarked” virtual” collections with others.

“We are very excited about every aspect of this project,” said Francis Blouin, director of the Bentley.” For the first time we are able to deliver an entire set of related archival collections to our users via the Internet. There is interest all over the world in this small chapter of a very big story.”

Mike Gorbbel of Sterling Heights, Mich., president of the Polar Bear Memorial Association, called the site,” a marvelous method of easily making the Polar Bear Collection available to anyone who has both an interest in this obscure military expedition and access to the Internet. If find it to be intuitively organized and easy to navigate.”

The Polar Bear ExpeditionBentley Historical LibrarySchool of Information