Geoffrey Yeo

Understanding users: a prerequisite for developing new technologies

The LEADERS Project has sought to develop innovative methods of delivering archive material to users via the Internet. In practice, this has been achieved through the development of open‐source tools that can be used by Archivists to build on‐line applications where transcripts and images of archive documents are delivered alongside contextual information from finding aids and authority records. This article explains how and why archive users have been placed at the centre of the LEADERS Project. It focuses on our preliminary research into who is currently visiting archive repositories and introduces our segmentation model for profiling types of users, as well as the results of our user survey, which we based on this model. This research was a prerequisite for the project: it has given us a broad understanding of the market for our product and has provided us with the background data necessary to ensure that we can go on to engage a representative sample of users to give us feedback on our work.

Understanding Users and Use: A Market Segmentation Approach

Market segmentation is an established technique in commercial marketing. It can be used by archivists and records managers to help them gain a wider understanding of their users. Segmentation can be based on demographic criteria, or other models can be employed that are more specific to studies of the use and users of records. Segmentation can be used to good effect in design and evaluation of user-focused systems. Standards for segmentation would be beneficial but their development will not be a simple task.

Trust and context in cyberspace

Every day we place trust or reliance on other people and on inanimate objects, but trust may be diminished in the world of information resources and technology. We are often told that information needs higher standards of verification in digital realms than in the paper world. Similarly, when we encounter digital records and archives we may be uncertain how far we can trust them. In the past, trust in records was said to be reinforced by trust in archivists and archival institutions. However, trust in professional experts and institutions is waning; notions of expert objectivity are increasingly challenged. This paper explores an idea proposed by David Weinberger, that ‘transparency is the new objectivity’. Where records are concerned, documentation of provenance and context forms a basis for enhancing their transparency and thus for evaluating their trustworthiness. Many commentators have expressed anxiety that, in digital environments where resources are reused and remixed at will, records may become decontextualized. But in computer science questions are now being asked about how data can be trusted and verified, and knowledge of their provenance is increasingly seen as a foundation for enabling trust. Many computer scientists argue that, while data should be reusable, each piece of data should carry evidence of its history and original contexts to help those who encounter it to judge its trustworthiness. Some researchers have set out to develop systems to capture and preserve information about data provenance. In the longer term, this research may help archivists meet the challenges of gathering and maintaining contextual information in the world of digital record-keeping. Methods of automatically harvesting certain kinds of contextual information are under investigation; automated solutions are likely to expedite what are currently time-consuming manual processes. However, merely being presented with information about provenance is not enough. Insofar as individuals or institutions supply us with that information, we have to decide how far we trust what those people or institutions tell us. There is still a place for expert voices, but experts cannot be seen as infallible providers of objective information.

User feedback: Testing the leaders demonstrator application

The LEADERS Project has developed a set of open-source tools that can be used by archivists to create online applications where digital representations of archive documents are presented alongside relevant contextual information. These tools use Extensible Markup Language (XML) technologies and are built around three well-known encoding standards: Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Encoded Archival Context (EAC) and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). A fundamental aspect of the LEADERS Project has been to gain user feedback as part of the research and development process. To this end, a demonstrator application has been constructed and has since been tested by a representative sample of archive users who took part in moderated discussions on its strengths and weaknesses. This article describes the results from the user testing of the demonstrator and discusses how different types of users reacted to the applications interface design, search functionality and detailed displays. It is hoped that this feedback from users will be useful to future implementers as a guide in the design of new online archive applications created using the LEADERS tools.

Rising to the level of a record? Some thoughts on records and documents

Purpose – This paper seeks to suggest ways of understanding the relationships between records and documents.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews some of the statements made about records and documents in professional literature. It also offers some thoughts on the connections between records and documents in digital and pre‐digital environments and their intersections with other concepts such as “data”.Findings – Although professionals have often seen records and documents as closely intertwined, this paper argues that the record and the document follow different logics. Documents are characterised by their format, records by their relation to activities, events or other temporal occurrents. Records need not be in documentary form, and can exist at multiple levels of aggregation. The notion that documents become records when they are “declared” is problematic. Capture and declaration do not determine record status, but if capture systems are robust they allow the power of the record to be harne...

Representing the Act: Records and Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory was developed in the twentieth century by the philosophers J. L. Austin and John Searle. This paper provides a brief introduction to the theory and then explores some aspects of it that seem relevant to concepts in archival science, particularly connections between speech act theory and a conceptualisation of records as persistent representations. The paper focuses on ideas about the role of representation in the performance of speech acts, the potential impact of speech act theory on perceptions of the record, and the importance of societal conventions in understanding the affinities of records to human action. It argues that records have performative characteristics and that, by potentially offering a middle way between the extremes of objectivist and interpretivist views, speech act theory can help us to comprehend relations between records, actions and events.

‘My First Professional Post’: Students' Expectations of the Job Market in Archives and Records Management in the United Kingdom

This article reports on a research project which sought to investigate the expectations and preferences of postgraduate students entering the job market in archives and records management in the United Kingdom. One of the objectives of the research was to find explanations for the varying levels of response to advertised vacancies. The article offers insights into the factors and influences that can determine whether new entrants to the profession decide to apply for a particular job vacancy, and provides some recommendations for employers seeking to fill entry-level posts.