Access and Accessibility of Interfaces to Primary Sources

(Funded by NHPRC)

The advent of the Internet has increased the amount of information concerning archival agencies and records that is publicly available. Whether that has made primary sources more accessible is debatable. Accessibility in this case refers not only to physical issues of availability of descriptions or even digital copies of materials, but also to the intellectual and cognitive accessibility that is required to make adequate use of primary sources. The goals of this project are to provide a research base that archives and manuscript collections can use to create more accessible and transparent access tools to enhance the usability and accessibility of primary sources. Specifically this project will:

1. Develop a standardized and replicable testing protocols to assess the usability of standard networked archival descriptive tools (MARC records and finding aids),

2. Create of a set of design principles / guidelines to assist in the networked publication of information about primary sources as well as the primary sources themselves,

3. Provide suggestions for changes in the archival user education, and

4. Enhance the research base of user studies through a series of articles published in the archival literature.

These products should inform professional practice as well as have impact on institutions that take advantage of the Internet to communicate information on primary sources to potential researchers. The two of the most obvious areas are in (1) the design of access tools and systems and (2) the development of archival education programs.

The research question to be addressed by this project is: How effective are existing access systems in providing information concerning primary sources? Within this broad question, several underlying questions will be addressed: What do users understand about archival representations? Do people understand the relationships between a MARC record and an Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aid and then between the finding aid and the actual primary sources? What overall interface design features, display elements, and functionalities do users prefer? What are the confusing design elements, content elements, and technology elements in MARC and EAD displays? These research questions will be addressed through a series of controlled usability studies on existing interfaces to ILS, OPAC, and finding aid systems to ascertain what users think about these systems, what they understand about the displays, and suggestions for redesign of these displays.

Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Yakel
Graduate Student Research Assistant: Jihyun Kim

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