The Tony Hillerman portal: Providing content enrichment and digital access to archival manuscripts

Abstract

Tony Hillerman (1925–2008) was a noted author from the American Southwest. In 2005, he formally donated his entire collection papers to the Center for Southwest Research, the special collections division of the University of New Mexico Libraries, with the understanding that they be used for educational purposes. This donation led to the creation of the Tony Hillerman Portal (http://ehillerman.unm.edu), a website that features digital facsimiles of Hillerman’s manuscripts and provides a realistic document examination and content manipulation experience for students and researchers. The portal is built on the Drupal 7.22 Content Management System, and utilizes a variety of supporting technologies, including a streaming media server and eBook display application. Future enhancements to the site will include text and content analysis tools that will be of interest to Digital Humanities researchers, and additional photographs, videos and oral histories that help document Tony Hillerman’s life and work.