osu_archives

“Keeping the User in Mind: User Experience and the Modern Library” takeaways:

Keep it simple, usable, useful, desirable, valuable, findable, credible, & accessible.

We can learn from the Google User Experience Team:

• focus on people,
• every millisecond counts,
• simplicity matters,
• engage beg & attract experts,
• dare to innovate,
• design for the world,
• plan for today & tomorrow’s biz,
• delight eye without distracting mind,
• be worthy of people’s trust, add a human touch.

For the virtual users, aim for simplicity & convenience. In our physical spaces, aim for comfortable & productive environments.

Users are more interested in shared experiences and less interested in material stuff/products (not sure I agree with this one!)

If you’d like to know more, included how to learn more, check here:

Sadeh, T (2008) “User Experience in the Library: a Case Study” New Library World 109 (1/2)
Usability Professionals Association
The Interaction Design Association
The User Experience Network
Bell & Shank (2007): Academic Librarianship by design: a blended librarian’s guide to the tools & techniques
Kunlavsky, M (2003). Observing the User Experience: a Practitioner’s Guide to User Research

Tiah

Though we only got one day of fog, it was quite nice to be back in my old stomping ground. I met up with lots of people I had worked with and gone to grad school with; catching up is always a treat. I also walked, walked, walked up and down those famous SF hills– again, a great treat!

Wednesday night I met 4 of the members of my online study group for last year’s Certified Archivist exam– nice to put faces to names, lots of emails & chat sessions, and reams of notes. We were also asked to speak at the CA certification forum. It was quite interesting meeting those who designed the test!

Of course, the stand-out of Thursday was my own session…Finding Aids 2.0 was the general topic, with my own talk looking at how social software tools are likely to change the relationship between the archivst and user. You can view the text for it (Archives for the People and by the People: Exploring the Dynamic, Interactive, and Changing Nature of the Relationship Between Archivist and User in a Web 2.0 World) on the SAA conference site. Rumor has it, there were over 500 people there!

RAO Section meeting: For the most part, this was a standard business meeting… But one thing that was quite interesting was hearing the results of the MPLP Basic Processing Satisfaction Survey. As expected, the respondents varied, collections varied, and satisfaction varied; however, there was more confirmation that the profession is moving towards this model of processing.

Manuscript Section meeting: 3 excellent presentations by Kate Theimer, Stephen Fletcher, and Paul Hedges.
Since they have a great synopsis of the session, please look at the SAA wiki: http://www.ibiblio.org/saawiki/2008/index.php/Manuscript_Repositories_Section_Meeting#Panel_Speakers.

Erika and I were honored to honor Monique at the Awards Ceremony where we clapped loudly when she received one of the two 2008 Howard T. Pinkett Minority Student Awards.
Another stand-out for me was the session I attended Saturday morning on the redesign of the Online Archive of California (OAC). Here is the Session Description from SAA Site. Tuesday of the following week I had a chance to meet with Rachel Hu, their user experience expert, and tour the California Digital Library in downtown Oakland.

Finally, Erika and I capped off the conference with a great lunch in ChinaTown and the session “A California Feast: Documenting the Wine and Food Revolution.” It was a wonderful capstone and a REALLY interesting session featuring Darryl Morrison, Victor Geraci, Cecilia Chiang, and Darrell Corti. For those who are interested, here is the Session Description from SAA Site.

And, as an aside, Ella got to revisit the place of her birth!

Thanks again to the library for supporting this trip and for Karl for holding down our fort!

Following are the highlights and major “take-aways” for me from the SAA conference last week in San Francisco. I also have detailed notes from the sessions and meetings I attended. If you would like to see them, please contact me directly at elizabeth.nielsen@oregonstate.edu.

First, my thanks to Academic Affairs for providing monetary support from Professional Faculty Development Funds as a match for Libraries’ funding. This was an excellent opportunity to learn about new initiatives in the profession, projects and programs at other repositories, and connect (or re-connect) with archival colleagues from across the U.S. West Coast and Northwest repositories were well-represented. The attendance of 1719 was the 3rd largest ever and the largest for a west coast meeting.

There were 10 concurrent sessions offered during most of the conference – so it’s necessary to “pick and choose”. I focused my attention on sessions that addressed the areas for which I have major responsibility here in the OSU Archives: arrangement and description (i.e. processing and preparing finding aids for collections) and the curation of moving image materials (films and videotapes).

Common topics were the application of minimal-level processing; user studies (of everything); evolution of standards; incorporating social networking/web 2.0 technologies; mass digitization of archival materials, and electronic records. When I attended SAA in 2001, there was still a fair amount of skepticism about EAD both in presentations and in the hallway conversations. By this meeting in 2008, EAD is clearly widely accepted and adopted (as is DACS as the content standard); the application of minimal-level processing is widespread; user studies are all the rage; and mass digitization of archival materials is on the horizon.

Themes, highlights, and take-aways
• Archivists’ Toolkit has been broadly adopted (>1300 implementors) and is here to stay. AT is an open-source archival collection-management sytem with modules for accessioning, physical control, and description. I will be preparing a recommendation that we (OSU Archives) adopt it.
• The OSU Archives is on par or ahead of other repositories in many areas (IR, adoption of MPLP, EAD/MARC, digital collections) – go Beavs! … and everyone is struggling with electronic records. I was disappointed that several presentations reported on projects/sites that are not (yet) publicly available.
• As a profession, we are grappling with the importance of “contextual” information and hierarchical arrangement of materials in an environment in which our users report they want a specific document and we are increasingly delivering individual items as digital objects.
• Mass digitization of archival materials is being tested in some repositories and will be necessary in order to provide the digital content that our users seek. Is this microfilming for the 21st century?
• Atlas Systems (of ILLiad fame) has developed a patron request software application that allows users to request boxes from within an EAD finding aid. This may be something that will be useful to NWDA.
• The next major archival standard will be Encoded Archival Context (EAC) – which will consist of EAC-CPF (for corporate bodies, persons, and families) and EAC-F (functions). This will allow for more robust authority records for archival collections creators. EAC-CPF will be out in the next 6-12 months.
• We will also see more focus on resource discovery and access — building on the strong standards base of DACS, EAD, and EAC.
• Providing moving images in short “clips” on-line (streaming) makes them more useful to K-12 teachers and also provides access for review to film producers (who are frequently on short deadlines).
• And … the two major vendors of archival supplies (Metal Edge and Hollinger) have merged – [actually, Metal Edge bought Hollinger].

Many, many thanks to Archivist Karl for holding down the fort here while the rest of us travelled to SAA.