- Fig 01 / Content Strategy
Decision: Publish archival finds as short, often funny stories with full citations
Result: A three-million-letter archive became readable for people outside the field
Museums & Memorials
The Private Voice of a Public Family
After the demise of the Medici in 1743, their archive of over three million letters remained much as they left it, without catalogs or indexes. These letters allow us to “hear” privileged discussions between artists, princes, courtiers, and advisors, revealing the culture and politics of the Renaissance through the thoughts of the Medici Grand Dukes, who dominated Europe from 1537 to 1743.
Overview
- 01 / Problem
- The Medici Archive Project is digitizing more than three million letters from the Medici grand-ducal archive, material with no natural popular audience. Its 2008–09 site had to serve scholars and draw in everyone else.
- 02 / Design Challenge
- As Bluecadet's Lead Developer, Russ designed the interactions and built the site, working from the visual designers' mockups.
- 03 / Approach
- "Search the database" is the most prominent control on every page. Finds are published as short, often funny stories, each with a full archival citation, an English summary and the Italian transcription.
- 04 / Outcome
- Captures of the finished bilingual site survive, including its page for the Galileo exhibition. No usage data does.
Process + Evidence Plates
A dated project despatch — 29 January 2009 — "The world beyond the Medici court… As many friends and patrons of the Medici Archive already know, the Mediceo del Principato archival corpus…" 396 words. The corpus is named precisely: Mediceo del Principato is the actual Florentine State Archive holding. Editorial publishing alongside the database. - Fig 02 / Information Architecture
A further site state at 345 words, with SEARCH the DATABASE prominent. The navigation is consistent: ABOUT THE PROJECT · OUR STAFF · FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM · EXHIBITIONS · JEWISH HISTORY · MEDICI ARCHIVE SOCIETY, with SEARCH the DATABASE, CONTACT and an ITALIANO language toggle. Decision: Make database search the most prominent control on every page
Result: Scholars reached the records in one step
- Fig 03 / Bilingual Content Strategy
The archive's densest capture at 671 words — the full site under its complete navigation. The navigation is consistent: ABOUT THE PROJECT · OUR STAFF · FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM · EXHIBITIONS · JEWISH HISTORY · MEDICI ARCHIVE SOCIETY, with SEARCH the DATABASE, CONTACT and an ITALIANO language toggle. The bilingual toggle is not decoration: this is a Florence-based scholarly project whose audience is split between Italian and Anglophone researchers. Decision: Give an English summary beside the Italian transcription, plus a site-wide Italian toggle
Result: English readers got access without losing the original text