Archival access from the user’s perspective (Romijn-Wixley and De Vries)

Julia Romijn-Wixley & Aron de Vries

European Conference on Digital Archiving, Geneva 2010

Archival Access from the User’s Perspective in a digital world

What are we going to talk about?Who are we?

Old and new users of archives

What have we done?

Competences of users

What have we discovered?

Building bridges

Discussion

Who are we? Julia Romijn-Wixley

(Archief Eemland)

Aron de Vries (Regionaal Archief Gorinchem)

Traditional users

New users

What have we done?

Main question:

What is the influence of user competences on the accessibility of archival collections?

Exploratory user study conducted at Archief Eemland (Amersfoort, the Netherlands)

Definition

Competence is a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job. It encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behaviour utilized to improve performance. More generally, competence is the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability to perform a specific role.

Competences of users

We have tested the following two domains of competence.

Archival Intelligence (Yakel and Torres 2003) “Archival intelligence is the knowledge of archival

principles, practices and institutions and the ability to understand the relationship between primary sources and their surrogates”.

Digital searching skills “Digital searching skills involve the ability to navigate, to

understand applications, to define relevant searching terms and to select results.”

What have we discovered?

Experience (satisfaction) is influenced by archival intelligence.

Searching behaviour is influenced by digital searching skills.

Four gaps

Principal Component Analysis

Understanding

Satisfaction

Conclusion 1: Experience is influenced by archival skills The apparent influence of archival intelligence is mainly

in the emotional sphere and the way people experience the searching for information on broad topics.

People with archival intelligence found the online finding aids more helpful and enjoyed the searching experience more.

What does this mean?

We need to provide users with the archival knowledge that they lack to be able to interpret the data.

Conclusion 2: Searching behavior is influenced by digital searching skills Digital searching skills determine the search behavior

and the understanding of the search system.

People with digital skills combine different strategies to find archival information.

What does this mean?

If we want to make our digital finding aids accessible to users, we need to make sure that they can search in a way that they are accustomed to.

Conclusion 3: Four gaps

Gap between user and metadata

Gap between question and query

Gap between habit versus archival practice

Usability Gap

Back to the main question:

What is the influence of user competences on the accessibility of archival collections?

Buildingbridges

Be a guide!

Build a system that generates the needed skills

Discussion Questions

Who is going to pick up the glove?

Are there Archives that already take the competences of their users into account?

What kind of tools can we make to close the gaps between online users and the archival institutions?