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Re: On-line access to archives/archival collections



Craig G. Wright wrote:
> Most of the articles I have read (and the ones Cal mentions)
> focus on the casual user (aka surfer). Is this the real target audience of archival
> websites?

The answer to the above question is actually not as relevant as one might think.  It's not only flippant, carefree, or unintelligent users I'm talking about.  There's an important distinction to make between willingness to read relevant content and willingness to read text that simply helps get one to that content.  I agree that we don't want to design for a user who isn't even willing to read the primary sources themselves or a bit of descriptive material directly relevant to her research task (e.g. biographical note about a specific person of interest, narrative history of a specific government agency of interest).  But we do want to design for those who hate to read directions, which is most of us.

There's a pretty large body of empirical evidence to indicate that users have very little patience with navigational content that's only potentially related to their interests, but quite a much higher degree of patience with things they think *are* related to their interests.  This is the concept of "scent" I mentioned previously.  If something seems like its leading someone in the right direction, they're willing to investigate it.  Otherwise, it's just seen as a distraction.

Jared Spool's work with User Interface Engineering is particularly interesting (http://world.std.com/~uieweb/index.html). In "As the Page Scrolls," for example, Spool points out that "users are perfectly willing to scroll. However, they'll only do it if the page gives them strong clues that scrolling will help them find what they're looking for." (http://world.std.com/~uieweb/scrollin.htm)

The same goes for waiting for images to load and reading narrative text.  People will take the time, but only if there's some indication it's worth their while.

This does mean users are stupid or unintellectual.  It just means that they're aware of how much information is out there and how little time they have.  How many of us read the entire preface and introduction of every book we ever consult, just to be sure we've grasped the full context?    

I think a passage from the paper I cited in the previous message ("The Paradox of the Active User" by John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson, 1987, http://www.cs.vt.edu/~rosson/papers/paradox.pdf) is quite telling:

"Training and reference materials often are designed under the assumption that people who need to learn something will be willing to read about it, to practice skills in a sensibly structured sequence of exercises, and finally to assemble these conceptual and skill components into a mature competence and understanding.  Further, it is assumed that when people seek to learn more about a domain they will again be willing to engage in these activities to develop and refine their expertise.  But these assumptions are empirically unsound.  Learners at every level of experience try to avoid reading.  In structured practice, they often accidentally or deliberately get off track and end up in lengthy and complex tangles of error recovery or self-initiated exploration...  When a domain expert tries to use a tool designed specifically to support his or her work activities, the orientation is to do real work, not to read descriptions and instructions, or to practice step-by-step exercises." (p.3)

This is talking about professionals who have very strong incentives to learn about the systems.  Just think of all the smart, dedicated professionals you know who have never taken the time to read the help files or manuals for the software they use.  Does this mean they're just "surfers"?  I don't think so.  It seems pretty clear to me that visitors to a site who don't even know up front whether it has anything they want will be even less willing to read the directions.

It's not our job to teach everyone in the world what the phrase "scope note" means to the archival profession any more than it's the job of an IT professional to teach every end users the technical jargon of her field.  It's our job to get people to materials they want in a way that serves their research interests but also reflects the historical context of the materials.  If they can do this without learing the meaning of the word "provenance" or "fonds" more power to them.

> I think not, at least I maintain that sites geared to casual users are an
> inefficient use of resources.

If I'm interpreting your use of the phrase "casual users" correctly, I would contend that most of us (even the most serious and intense researchers) are casual users.  A great deal of literature and empirical data about sense-making in the fields of cognitive psychology and information retrieval have reinforced this fact.  If I'm looking for a particular book in the library stacks, I may run across another book by the same author that dramatically shifts the nature of my research.  If I'm conducting a search through Yahoo! to find out what online repositories may have primary materials on my given research interest, the hits I get back may radically change my understanding of the research domain and cause me to change the wording of my query and the places I decide to look.

The great value of the hypertext medium of the Web is that this sort of discovery is even easier.  If we're to take advantage of this, we must recognize that our finding aids are a tiny part of a huge research sea.  Users won't simply log into a finding aid and then back out.  They should be able to move in and out of them in the same way they do with other pages on the Web.

Since most of our intended users aren't intimately familiar with our collections before they start doing their research, we simply CANNOT assume they'll be willing to invest a lot of time and energy into figuring out our interfaces.  Those components of the interface that indicate to me whether or not it's worth my while better be very clear.  Otherwise, I'll never get to the rest of it.  

> Once there however, many folks are willing to read directions and try to
> figure out how to get as much information as possible.

I agree.  The points I've been trying to make relate to getting them there.

> Again, trying to gear finding aids to a casual surfer is plain silliness
> IMHO.

As finding aids are currently conceived, I would completely agree.  Given their very format and presentation, we can only assume that dedicated researchers will be willing to work through them.  This reflects the practical realities of creating online copies of an existing paper system and is very understandable.  But this doesn't mean it's the ideal.  There are innumerable options for presenting structured information (like that stored in EAD) that we haven't yet explored. 

> Frankly I don't care about someone who only spends
> a minute on my site.

In many ways, they're the ones we need to focus on if we're going to improve our access systems.  Don Norman makes this point very well in his recent book, The Invisible Computer (http://www.jnd.org/#RecentBooks).  If we only focus on those who already use our materials for great lengths of time, then we'll never learn what needs improving.  Analyzing the characteristics of visits to our sites than only last a minute can be amazingly helpful.  Why did they leave?  Did they find what they wanted?  Did they get confused and give up?  Or are they just not interested in these particular materials?

> I think one possible avenue of advance is to target a specific user group
> (K-12 classes that focus on state/local history, genealogists, etc) design
> something to increase access to that group, monitor use and solicit
> feedback.

Amen.

In addition to such direct data collection, the analysis of Web server logs is also very useful.

Some user studies have been done in our field.  A few of them include:
- Karen Collins, "Providing Subject Access to Images: A Study of User Queries," American Archivist, (Spring 1998): 36-55.
- Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, "An Exploration of K-12 User Needs for Digital Primary Source Materials," American Archivist, (Spring 1998): 136-57
- William J. Maher, "The Use of User Studies," Midwestern Archivist (Vol. XI, No. 1): 15-26 - not itself a user study but provides great advice on what to consider

But we could definitely use a lot more of them.

Just as important as more general research projects, however, is work toward usability in specific cases.  This need not include weeks of work.  Since resources are generally limited for such things, one can practice what Jakob Nielsen explains as "Guerrilla HCI" (http://www.useit.com/papers/guerrilla_hci.html).

A little bit of user observation testing (not just focus groups, but actually watching them use the system) and server log analysis can go a long way.  There is simply no replacement for the observation of people actually doing research (unassisted by the human observer) through our sites.

Once again, these opinions are my own and not meant to reflect those of anyone else living, dead or otherwise.

========================================================
Cal Lee
Electronic Records Project Archivist
Kansas State Historical Society
Phone: 785-272-8681, ext. 280         Fax: 785-272-8682
http://www.kshs.org/archives/recmgt.htm
                        "Obsolete power corrupts obsoletely."
                                                        - Ted Nelson

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