Annomilli
Launch event: Digital public annotation of historical objects for wider discovery 
 
Launch Recording:
 
Monday, May 18, 2026
6:30 PM Indian Standard Time
Find your time-zone here:
 
Online event. Free, and open to the public
Online registration link here:
 
Overview:
The historical object’s future is often determined by how we see it. How it is described can shape how users usually first encounter this object and take it further to new spaces of meaning-making. Users and custodians of objects at libraries, archives and museums have, of course, done this for generations. They have offered context to the archive, from marginalia on card catalogues to modified descriptions on digital catalogues. 
 
While vital, these annotations occur in a somewhat disjoint environment, and not always in ways that can enable wider digital discovery, or allow heritage institutions to bring back these annotations to their catalogue. 
 
Our digital prototype, annomilli, aims to allow the public to find and share perspectives on historical objects in a structured way that can lead to wider discovery. In this event, we present the first public demonstration and workflow for one kind of historical object, the archival folder. Annomilli is an open-source project that enables public annotations on material imported from existing archival catalogues. Annotations align with existing archival fields for subjects, people, places, description and a new field for affect. Users can tag with existing ‘controlled’ vocabulary or suggest ways of seeing for a new local vocabulary. Future users can browse for the new terms on the annomilli platform, which can also export the annotated objects for source archives to bring back richer description into their catalogues. 
 
Annomilli is a small step that can scale in many directions. In all these efforts, our aim is to get the public closer to the object, widen description and discovery, and align with existing standards for historical material.
 
Development:
This prototype demo is a proof of concept for one archival standard that is used at many archives (EAD 2002), with plans for future scaling and work. Annomilli is a project at Archives at NCBS made possible with support from Arcadia. It is developed in collaboration with Tattle. Prototype design is by Anoopa John. The software architecture for the prototype is toward building a public open tool for wider discovery of historical material, drawing on the openly available resources of the Milli Archives Foundation.