![\"Collection](\"http:\/\/rrchnm.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/911-collectionhighlight-300x223.jpg\")
We at RRCHNM continue to expand the resources in the September 11 Digital Archive <\/a>(911DA) as individuals and institutions want to share their collections with us. For example, retired Federal Aviation Administration employee Brian Sullivan donated a collection that offers insight into passenger safety prior to and on September 11, 2001 in the form of reports, guides, testimonies of Federal Aviation Administration employees and airport workers, meeting minutes, memos, transcripts, and affidavits. Graduate student Alyssa Fahringer scanned and described the items in the Boston Federal Aviation Administration Filings<\/a> collection.\u00a0 The Center also recently received digital scans of visitor comment cards contributed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History<\/a> on the 10th anniversary of 9\/11 in 2011. Alyssa is adding those items this fall.<\/p>\nAs RRCHNM continues to maintain and add collections, we are also working to improve computational access to these 150,000 digital items. With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Omeka team is developing plugins<\/a> that will help users to mine the texts available in the site, and others like it build in Omeka<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Individual items contributed to 911DA<\/em> have rich personal stories to tell that call for a close reading of the text or examination of contributed images. In some cases, a more powerful story emerges by examining the aggregate, with the promise of surfacing larger insights through \u201cdistant reading,\u201d an analytical procedure by which researchers evaluate large bodies of text in the aggregate as a way to discern otherwise opaque patterns and meanings. To enable both close and distant reading, simple annotation and word analysis plugins are in development. The Omeka<\/em> team will use the vast collections of 911DA<\/em> as a case study to demonstrate the benefits of using the new plugins and to publish new insights found in this corpus of materials.<\/p>\n