Human Selection and Digitized Archival Collections: an Exploratory Research Project About Choice of Archival Materials Digitized for Online Public Availability

Our collective memory, the history that is cultivated through reflection, documentation, and consensus of historical data, is predicated upon the citizenry having access to the historical materials that society has created. Digitization has enabled greater public access to those materials. However, are items being scanned or digitally photographed to create surrogates that are then not made available to the world? The impetus for this study is to delve into whether or not intentional or unintentional personal choices play a role in determining which items archivists transform into digital surrogates; both in the decision of what to digitize and what to make available to the public on the World Wide Web. When one archival collection is prioritized over another or when it is not possible to digitize an entire collection, what rationale is used to determine which items will be digitized and published online? Do intentional or unintentional personal choices come into play in the decision-making? To answer these questions, four case studies were conducted, involving the random sampling of online collections and concomitant interviews of archivists. The purpose of this study is to enhance archivists’ understanding of the reasons that guide the digitization decision-making process. Through such understanding, archivists can be more proactive in the decision-making process to realize the benefit of digitizing and publishing archival materials that ultimately affect collective memory. The findings of this research revealed that in the case of the four institutions assessed, archivists do use personal choice to determine which materials within an archive are digitized

Developing an Image-Based Classifier for Detecting Poetic Content in Historic Newspaper Collections

Developing an Image-Based Classifier for Detecting Poetic Content in Historic Newspaper Collections details and analyzes the first stage of work of the Image Analysis for Archival Discovery project team. Our team is is investigating the use of image analysis to identify poetic content in historic newspapers. The project seeks both to augment the study of literary history by drawing attention to the magnitude of poetry published in newspapers and by making the poetry more readily available for study, as well as to advance work on the use of digital images in facilitating discovery in digital libraries and other digitized collections. We have recently completed the process of training our classifier for identifying poetic content, and as we prepare to move in to the deployment stage, we are making available our methods for classification and testing in order to promote further research and discussion. The precision and recall values achieved during the training (90.58%; 79.4%) and testing (74.92%; 61.84%) stages are encouraging. In addition to discussing why such an approach is needed and relevant and situating our project alongside related work, this paper analyzes preliminary results, which support the feasibility and viability of our approach to detecting poetic content in historic newspaper collections

Increasing Our Vision for 21st-Century Digital Libraries

This presentation Reads digital library interfaces—or their main door interfaces—as glimpses into what we have thus far valued in the development of digital libraries Frames a visual way of thinking about textual materials Introduces the work of our research team—where we are now, and where we\u27re headed Draws some connections between the parts This presentation is very much a look into thinking in process and work in progress and proposes the following ideas: As a community, we can do much more with the digital images we\u27re creating of textual materials than we\u27ve heretofore done. We aspire to have additional layers or levels of image analysis become part of the default processing work in the creation of digital libraries, not only as something that happens external or parallel to digital libraries, and not only toward the purpose of generating text. We aspire to more processing up front and iterative processing of materials—so that digital libraries\u27 materials are not once and done —and that this more processing is presented to users as additional options for how they can explore digital libraries, find materials of relevance, and imagine new possibilities Even as the digital libraries community focuses on supporting computational use of digital libraries—and our research team recognizes that our project very much depends on that computational use being supported—we should not leave behind, in 1998, those users of digital libraries for whom computational use is not their point of entry. (More on that date in a moment.

Getting to Know Digital Collections Users

Use and user studies can provide valuable information to archivists and librarians who wish to improve their services and systems. However, studying the use and users of digital archival collections can be challenging. This study describes the methods and findings of a study conducted by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) to explore questions such as, who is using UNLV Digital Collections? How are they using the materials? What are their user interface preferences? Are they satisfied? The methods used include web analytics, an online survey, and interviews. The author shares lessons learned to aid other repositories in designing and implementing digital collections assessments. The findings reveal some consistencies with past studies in user preferences over time and across different user and collection types. Study participants desired intuitive but customizable interfaces and searching and browsing functionality. They wanted the ability to easily and quickly understand the scope of the collections, and to efficiently review search results. Support for downloading high resolution files, citing materials, and creating personal collections was also apparent. Overall, study participants indicated that they are satisfied with UNLV Digital Collections, but this type of research can contribute to improvements that could attract new users and expand the reach of digital collections

What Do Researchers Need ? Feedback On Use of Online Primary Source Materials

DeRidder Jody L. et Matheny Kathryn G., 2014, « What Do Researchers Need? Feedback On Use of Online Primary Source Materials », D-Lib Magazine, juillet 2014, vol. 20, no 7/8. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july14/deridder/07deridder.html Cultural heritage institutions are increasingly providing online access to primary source materials for researchers. While the intent is to enable round-the-clock access from any location, few studies have examined the extent to which current web delivery is meetin..

Nutzerbedürfnisse für retrodigitalisierte Primärquellen. Eine Metastudie und eine vergleichende Studie unter Gedächtnisinstitutionen

Die Retrodigitalisierung und Online-Publikation von Archiv- und Bibliotheksgut ist in aller Munde. Die Mehrheit der Gedächtnisinstitutionen stellt heute digitalisierte Inhalte online zur Verfügung. Dennoch wird ein grosser Teil davon nicht längerfristig genutzt. Studien haben ergeben, dass der Grund dafür die unzureichende Nützlichkeit für Wissenschaftler und Wissenschaftlerinnen ist, für die Digitalisierungsprojekte in erster Linie durchgeführt werden. Diese Arbeit geht der Frage nach, wie eine Online-Präsentation retrodigitalisierter unikaler Primärquellen für eine wissenschaftliche Nutzung idealerweise aussehen könnte. Dazu legt sie zum einen dar, welches die Anforderungen aus Sicht der Archivwissenschaft und -praxis sind. Zum anderen werden aus aktuellen Studien Nutzerbedürfnisse extrahiert und zusammengestellt. Die Ergebnisse dieser Analysen werden daraufhin in Bezug gesetzt zur heutigen Praxis von Gedächtnisinstitutionen, digitalisierte Primärquellen online zu präsentieren. Dazu wird eine vergleichende Studie unter wissenschaftlichen Institutionen und Portalen durchgeführt. Unter Einbezug von Fachliteratur wird diskutiert, was ein digitales Archiv für eine wissenschaftliche Nutzung idealerweise bieten müsste, um für das angestrebte Zielpublikum attraktiv zu sein

An evaluation of how digitised periodicals serve academic research in a New Zealand Context

Research problem This research investigates how researchers from humanities backgrounds research print periodicals that have been digitised. It investigates how New Zealand digitised periodical resources facilitate that research. How do these resources represent the periodical as an object, not just textual content? Methodology This research project is mixed methods in design combining two qualitative approaches of content analysis and a self-reporting survey comprised of mainly open-ended questions. These approaches facilitated exploration of rich data interspersed with some quantitative data to help interpret some of the findings. Both methods were undertaken simultaneously after an initial pilot study of one online source. The content analysis focused on four New Zealand digitised periodicals sources and there were nineteen responses to the survey. Results The findings indicated humanities researchers are using content and paratexts in their research. They require context from the digitised periodicals they use and they want good quality images and readable text. Researchers call for refinement of search results into component categories and want good browsing functionality. New Zealand digitised resources are inconsistent, fulfilling only some of these requirements and not delivering on others. Implications A better understanding of paratexts in periodicals and how they are used in research will address some of the assumptions in library practice that lead to incomplete digitisation and/or limited accessibility. The importance of consultation with targeted research communities during the planning of digitisation projects is highlighted

Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research

This thesis investigates tow key questions: firstly, how do two broad groups - academic, family and local historians, and the public - evaluate, use, and contribute to digital history resources? And consequently, what impact have digital technologies had on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research? Analysing the impact of design on participant experiences and the reception of digital historiography by demonstrating the value of methods drawn from human-computer interaction, including heuristic evaluation, trace ethnography and semi-structured interviews. This thesis also investigates the relationship between heritage crowdsourcing projects (which ask the public to help with meaningful, inherently rewarding tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge) and the development of historical skills and interests. It situates crowdsourcing and citizen history within the broader field of participatory digital history and then focuses on the impact of digitality on the research practices of faculty and community historians. Chapter 1 provides an overview of over 400 digital history projects aimed at engaging the public or collecting, creating or enhancing records about historical materials for scholarly and general audiences. Chapter 2 discusses design factors that may influence the success of crowdsourcing projects. Following this, Chapter 3 explores the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history. Chapter 4 shifts our focus from public participation to scholarly practices in historical research, presenting the results of interviews conducted with 29 faculty and community historians. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads that link public participation and scholarly practices, teasing out the ways in which the practices of discovering, gathering, creating and sharing historical materials and knowledge have been affected by digital methods, tools and resources

User Experience e User Interface Design em Digital Collections Culturais: Uma interface para um arquivo digital de lendas tradicionais algarvias

Nas últimas décadas, o conhecimento sofreu transformações a vários níveis. O constante crescimento da internet possibilitou a disseminação de informação de forma mais prática, minimizando problemas como o acesso físico limitado a documentos. As instituições e organizações motivadas por este crescimento e partilha dedicaram-se à recolha, digitalização e criação de milhares de itens de valor histórico e cultural que são mantidos nas denominadas digital collections (Wood, 2019). Todavia, e apesar deste grande passo para o futuro da informação, existe a demanda para que estas coleções se mantenham atualizadas, não só a nível informativo, mas também a nível de experiência de utilização e interface, uma vez que estes representam a forma como a informação é exibida e explorada pelo utilizador. Assim, com o passar dos anos e com o constante desenvolvimento digital, estes mesmos utilizadores, acabam por possuir grandes expectativas no uso dos sistemas/websites e esperam que eles se adaptem às novidades tecnológicas (Vacek, 2018). No entanto, o que acontece é que estes critérios aparentam estar a ser deixados de parte, uma vez que quando consultamos uma digital collection cultural, seja ela num arquivo digital, biblioteca digital ou até mesmo num repositório, se torna possível identificar diversos casos que se encontram em estagnação. Deste modo, a experiência de utilização que é disponibilizada, acaba muita das vezes por ser complexa e o design da interface apresenta-se datado do tempo em que foi projetado e posto a utilização. As digital collections, para efeitos culturais, históricos e académicos, têm assim estado presentes na nossa comunidade já há anos e a verdade é que cada vez mais começam a ter um valor indispensável na salvaguarda de bens materiais físicos e digitais. Deste modo, a investigação teórica desenvolvida nesta dissertação foca-se em refletir e entender a importância que estas coleções têm para a comunidade, tendo em principal foco apresentar as causas que levaram a esta estagnação de experiência e de interface, reforçando e expondo a necessidade que possa existir na sua atualização. Desta forma, e uma vez que o principal objetivo será o desenvolvimento de um projeto que consiste no design de uma interface para um arquivo digital sobre lendas tradicionais algarvias, que apresente de forma visual soluções aos resultados recolhidos ao longo desta investigação, foi imprescindível a aplicação de metodologias que compõem o processo de User experience (Ux) design, tais como personas, user stories, case studies, user journey maps, surveys e tree diagrams, para investigar quais as chances de proporcionar uma melhor experiência de utilização nos arquivos de lendas, reconhecendo, através de casos de estudo específicos e testemunhos, os problemas que esta mesma estagnação está a causar a este tipo de coleções. Para além disso, e estando diretamente ligado, entra também o User interface (Ui) design onde se procurou apresentar soluções gráficas e estruturais, usando metodologias como site maps, task flow, wireframes, layouts e protótipo para gerar a interface gráfica do arquivo. Para finalizar, esta investigação procura assim, através da disciplina de design gráfico, orientada na experiência de utilização, identificar e explorar métodos que ajudem a assimilar e justificar problemas e necessidades num contexto real, ao mesmo tempo que se apresenta as soluções para melhorar as interfaces dos arquivos digitais de lendas

Discovering digitized special collections: An investigation of researchers' practices and priorities

Over the past 20 years, many libraries have devoted significant resources to digitizing their special collections. Relatively few resources have been devoted to designing effective and easy-to-use online delivery platforms for these collections. Through an online questionnaire and a series of semi-structured interviews with University of Oxford humanities researchers, this dissertation investigates how academics discover digitized special collections, what resources they make use of, and what metadata and image functionality is most important to them. Key points include the importance of centralized shelfmark indices, the ineffectiveness of search engines in crawling digital library platforms, and the variance in user needs depending on discipline, career stage and geographic location