Today people make novel uses of social networking and other internet software to respond to tragic events in creative and dynamic ways. Since shortly after the April 16, 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, this research group has integrated digital library, data and text mining, information visualization, and social network analysis techniques to help with understanding and recovery from this tragic school crisis. This proposal is meant to research and develop a next- generation domain specific digital library software suite, the Crisis, Tragedy and Recovery (CTR) -toolkit, building upon 17 years of work on digital libraries, as well as expertise in information retrieval, data and text mining, database management, human-computer interaction, and sociology. Advanced intelligent information integration methods have not been sufficiently applied to this domain. The impact of events is felt over extended periods, requiring longitudinal perspectives to understand their complexity and inter-dependencies. Consequently, with the Internet Archive and other partners, the group will begin to create CTRnet, an integrated distributed digital library network for providing a rich suite of CTR-related services. Such work will help ensure that further tragic events might be better understood and prevented.
