Wendy M. Duff

Stories and names: Archival description as narrating records and constructing meanings

The authors of this essay, coming from very different traditions and modes of archival discourse, explore together archival description as a field of archival thinking and practice. Their shared conviction is that records are always in the process of being made, and that the stories of their making are parts of bigger stories understandable only in the ever-changing broader contexts of society. The exploration begins with an interrogation of the traditional and ever-valid questions of the what and the why of archival description. Thereafter they offer a deconstruction of these questions and of the answers commonly proffered. In these sections of the essay their concern is with descriptive architecture, the analysis covering a number of specific architectures and including only oblique references to descriptive standardization. The concluding section attempts to draw out the implications of their analysis for endeavours—irrespective of the architectures being used — to define, and to justify, descriptive standards. Their call is not to dispense with standardization, but rather to create space for a liberatory approach which engages creatively the many dangers of standardization.

I spent 1 1/2 hours sifting through one large box....: diaries as information behavior of the archives user: lessons learned

This article describes how diaries were implemented in a study of the use of archives and archival finding aids by history graduate students. The issues concerning diary use as a data collection technique are discussed as well as the different types of diaries.

A tale of two cities: implications of the similarities and differences in collaborative approaches within the digital libraries and digital humanities communities

In addition to drawing upon content experts, librarians, archivists, developers, programmers, managers, and others, many emerging digital projects also pull in disciplinary expertise from areas that do not typically work in team environments. To be effective, these teams must find processes-some of which are counter to natural individually oriented work habits-which support the larger goals and group-oriented work of these digital projects. This article will explore the similarities and differences in approaches within and between members of the Digital Libraries (DL) and Digital Humanities (DH) communities by formally documenting the nature of collaboration in these teams. While there are many similarities in approaches between DL and DH project teams, some interesting differences exist and may influence the effectiveness of a digital project team with membership that draws from these two communities. Conclusions are focused on supporting strong team processes with recommendations for documentation, communication, training, and the development of team skills and perspectives.

‘Creating a better understanding of who we are’: a survey of graduates of a museum studies program

Abstract This paper reports on the findings of a mail survey of 179 respondents who graduated from a masters level program in museum studies at the University of Toronto between 1970 and 2007. The survey gathered information about the professional experiences of these graduates, what they perceive to be the necessary knowledge and skills in the profession, and their perceptions of current and future job prospects in the museum field. More than two-thirds of all respondents indicated that they had pursued the degree because they were either following their dreams or the program was appealing. Despite the many challenges professionals encounter in the field – e.g., sustainable funding, remaining relevant, and engaging the public – respondents reported that museums provided rewarding places to develop professional careers.

“It challenges members to think of their work through another kind of specialist's eyes”: Exploration of the benefits and challenges of diversity in digital project teams

Digital project teams are by definition comprised of people with various skills, disciplines and content knowledge. Collaboration within these teams is undertaken by librarians, academics, undergraduate and graduate students, research assistants, computer programmers and developers, content experts, and other individuals. While this diversity of people, skills and perspectives creates benefits for the teams, at the same time, it creates a series of challenges which must be minimized to ensure project success. Drawing upon interview and survey data, this paper explores the benefits, advantages, and challenges associated with these types of project teams. It will conclude with a series of recommendations focused on harnessing the advantages while minimizing the challenges.

Increasing the acceptance of functional requirements for electronic evidence

This article reports on a research study that tested the effect of statements of “ literary warrant ” on lawyers, auditors and information specialists’ evaluations of a set of functional requirements for electronic evidence. It found that legal statements can increase the rating of importance of some of the functional requirements. Its results also provided evidence that differences in subjects professional backgrounds and their computer knowledge can affect the ratings of importance the subjects gave to the functional requirements.

The Archival Metrics Toolkit: Development and implementation

User based evaluation in archives and manuscript repositories lags behind that of libraries and museums. This paper discusses the development and testing of the Archival Metrics Toolkit which is designed to support archivists in conducting user-based evaluations. The current Toolkit includes 5 different questionnaires focused on assessing various archival services in Colleges and Universities as well as instructions for administration and data analysis. The questionnaires aim to gather feedback from (1) onsite users of the reading room, (2) students who have attended an orientation session and (3) instructors who use the archives for teaching, as well as (4) online users of the website and (5) online users of finding aids.

HyperRAD: A Case Study in Developing Electronic Manuals for Archives

This case study describes an experiment to compare the use of the printed paperbased version of the Canadian Rules for Archival Description with its hypertext prototype, HyperRAD. The results of the experiment revealed no statistically significant differences in user efficiency or effectiveness or in user preference for either tool. The article concludes with some recommendations for further development.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Archives of Canada through the Canadian Council of Archives, and the material support of the School of Library and Information Studies, Dalhousie University.

Usability beyond the interface: Designing a portal for text analysis

We report on a two-phase usability analysis of the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR). The first phase consisted of 20 contextual inquiry interviews and the second phase, a further 17 usability interviews with text analysis researchers. Findings suggest that the conceptual design of the portal needs to emphasize text content, functionality and text analysis tasks rather than text format and text analysis tasks, and that terminology was a major obstacle in use of the portal. Study results were used to guide the re-design of the portal.