Convergere a valle. Lo studio del punto di vista degli utenti degli ambienti culturali digitali e l'esperienza del progetto \u201cUna Citt\ue0 per gli Archivi\u201d

Un fruttuoso dialogo tra gli specialisti del trattamento digitale di fonti storiche, archivi, biblioteche e beni artistici, deve includere le problematiche legate alla efficace realizzazione di quegli ambienti ove rendere disponibili per un pubblico pi\uf9 o meno largo le risorse digitali. Questo ambito si scontra di norma con alcune differenze di approccio delle diverse comunit\ue0 \u2013 riguardanti la sostanza, quando non solo la forma \u2013 in quanto a logiche descrittive, aggregative, di restituzione, di standard applicati e di profili di utenza previsti. E' interessante, in questo senso, allargare la visuale dalle sole attivit\ue0 a monte dei progetti \u2013 in cui le questioni sono modelli, opzioni tecnologiche e ambienti di output \u2013 al comportamento dei destinatari dei servizi, esaminando quale sia l'effettiva esperienza delle risorse digitali, nell\u2019ottica della condivisione di metodi di indagine e in vista della definizione di metriche di valutazione. In Italia, ma non solo, sono rare le ricerche sistematiche sugli utenti digitali culturali, quindi ogni esperienza di un qualche rilievo metodologico e statistico acquista particolare valore. Partendo dalle questioni metodologiche degli user studies per ambienti culturali digitali, si presentano qui i tratti principali dell'articolato studio di valutazione e messa a punto del prototipo del portale \u201cUna Citt\ue0 per gli Archivi\u201d basato sul coinvolgimento degli utenti

Call me by your name: towards an authority data control shared between archives and libraries

An important and not often addressed topic \u2013 considering the issues opened by cross-disciplinary projects \u2013 is the shared control of authority records, or better authority metadata, extended to other documentary and cultural heritage sciences. This paper will examine the potential opened by multi-dimensional and networked logics in the representation of entities in the form of data towards which the document communities are converging. This approach is even more valid if we consider the users\u2019 point of view, presently forced to jump from one information environment to another, and confront different names, forms and attributes for the same entities. The core entities to work on are persons, corporate bodies, places, chronological contexts, events, qualifying their relationships. After a brief resume of archival description\u2019s peculiarity, the paper highlights the updated standards available, mostly IFLA-LRM and RiC, precious documents to start from and stimulate an active collaboration. To facilitate the sharing, control, and enrichment of authority data in the form of RDF assertions, librarians and archivists may follow several pathways: matching the existing conceptual models, converging on a shared data playground like Wikidata, and developing foundational meta-ontology

Per un sistema della memoria documentaria in Italia nel transito al digitale

The article is about the history of archives in Italy after the national unification (1861) and the problems of today at tecnical and political level. The digital i incoming but th paper is still present

L\u2019usabilit\ue0 degli ambienti bibliotecari e archivistici digitali come requisito di qualit\ue0: contesto, modelli e strumenti di valutazione

Un ambiente digitale dedicato a rendere facilmente disponibili risorse, documenti e informazioni, come sono un OPAC, una digital library o un archivio online, non pu\uf2 dirsi efficace se non soddisfa le aspettative degli utenti. L\u2019usabilit\ue0 costituisce uno dei macro-requisiti chiave per garantire una buona interazione tra l\u2019utente e il sistema, indipendentemente dalla qualit\ue0 e quantit\ue0 dei contenuti. Bibliotecari e archivisti, sempre pi\uf9 coinvolti anche nella progettazione degli ambienti digitali, devono avere consapevolezza dei modelli e degli strumenti per la misurazione della soddisfazione, cos\uec come un modello di riferimento condiviso dovrebbe includere come fondanti anche le questioni legate all\u2019usabilit\ue0. Questo contributo, dopo aver contestualizzato il tema ed esaminato i modelli esistenti, presenta alcuni strumenti di valutazione dell\u2019usabilit\ue0, non specialistici e disponibili liberamente per la comunit\ue0 italiana.A digital environment whose aim is making easily available resources, documents and information, such as an OPAC, a digital library or an archive online, is not fully effective if it does not meet final users\u2019 satisfaction. Usability is one of the key macro-requirements for ensuring the quality of interaction between users and systems in order to seek, identify, select and consume content. The LIS and archival community, more and more intensely involved in the design of digital environments, must be aware of models and tools available to measure the perceived satisfaction. A quality reference model should include the fundamental issues related to usability, largely independent of the type of application and content. This paper contextualizes the quality of use of software products in the light of existing LIS models and presents some non-specialist evaluation tools freely available to the Italian community

Introduction : user studies for digital library development

Introductory chapter to the edited collection on user studies in digital library development. Contains a general introduction to the topic and biographical sketches of the contributors.peer-reviewe

ARCHIVES ONLINE FOR USERS: TOWARDS A USER-CENTERED QUALITY MODEL INCLUDING A COMPARATIVE EVALUATION FRAMEWORK FOR USER STUDIES

The traditional paradigm of archival mediation had to come to grips with the new web environment: if guides, inventories and indexes act as mediation tools between what is inside archives and whoever needs to access them, traditional archival finding aids are not ready to be published on the web, where users are basically free from any mediation. From the final users\u2019 point of view, archival informative mediation on the web is suffering much more than what archivists usually accept. The starting point for rethinking the archival mediation paradgim could be the principle that \u201coutput is not input\u201d, and the compliance to current archival standards is a necessary condition, but not sufficient to guarantee the usability of archives online. Rarely archival projects organize specific user studies to finalize language, interfaces and architectures of the new environments. The paper, before proposing some first elements to guide the drawing of a new model (built to ensure quality to archives online in terms of user needs, experience and satisfaction), presents the case study of a huge archival portal based on an user-centered approach. In particular, if during the formative phase, the portal prototype has been tested adopting a user studies research, now, when the service is active, it is possible to integrate and compare those data with the web analytics results

Archives in a Graph. The Records in Contexts Ontology within the framework of standards and practices of Archival Description

Description is one of the key activities of archival profession, a guarantee for correct management, access and conservation of archives. The cornerstones of the tradition, formalized in the last decade of the twentieth century in the standards of the International Council on Archives, are the respect of fonds and their contexts. The ICA standardization renewal process started in 2012 has produced two versions, both in draft, of the Reference Model of the brand new standard RiC-Records in Contexts, on which the very recent RiC-Ontology has been based. The descriptive hierarchy and the concept of the finding aid – even electronic – as a document isolated from the Linked Open Data available in the infosphere are overcome. This contribution aims to present RiC-CM and RiC-O, their criticalities and perspectives, contextualizing them within the debate and practices of archival description

Archives in a Graph. The Records in Contexts Ontology within the framework of standards and practices of Archival Description

Description is one of the key activities of archival profession, a guarantee for correct management, access and conservation of archives. The cornerstones of the tradition, formalized in the last decade of the twentieth century in the standards of the International Council on Archives, are the respect of fonds and their contexts. The ICA standardization renewal process started in 2012 has produced two versions, both in draft, of the Reference Model of the brand new standard RiC-Records in Contexts, on which the very recent RiC-Ontology has been based. The descriptive hierarchy and the concept of the finding aid – even electronic – as a document isolated from the Linked Open Data available in the infosphere are overcome. This contribution aims to present RiC-CM and RiC-O, their criticalities and perspectives, contextualizing them within the debate and practices of archival description

Gli archivi in un grafo. L’ontologia Records in Contexts nel quadro degli standard e della pratica della descrizione archivistica

Description is one of the key activities of archival profession, a guarantee for correct management, access and conservation of archives. The cornerstones of the tradition, formalized in the last decade of the twentieth century in the standards of the International Council on Archives, are the respect of fonds and their contexts. The ICA standardization renewal process started in 2012 has produced two versions, both in draft, of the Reference Model of the brand new standard RiC-Records in Contexts, on which the very recent RiC-Ontology has been based. The descriptive hierarchy and the concept of the finding aid – even electronic – as a document isolated from the Linked Open Data available in the infosphere are overcome. This contribution aims to present RiC-CM and RiC-O, their criticalities and perspectives, contextualizing them within the debate and practices of archival description.La descrizione è uno dei perni della professione archivistica, garanzia di corretta gestione, accesso e conservazione degli archivi. I capisaldi della tradizione, formalizzata nell’ultimo decennio del Novecento anche negli standard dell’International Council on Archives,  sono il rispetto dell’integrità dei fondi e dei loro contesti di produzione. Il processo di rinnovamento degli standard avviato dal 2012 dall’ICA ha prodotto due versioni, ambedue in bozza, del Reference Model di Records in Contexts, su cui si è basata la recentissima RiC-Ontology. Si supera la gerarchia descrittiva e la concezione dello strumento di ricerca – anche digitale – come opera isolata rispetto ai Linked Open Data disponibili nell’infosfera. Questo contributo intende presentare contenuti, criticità e prospettive di RiC-CM e RiC-O, contestualizzandoli rispetto al dibattito e alla pratica della descrizione archivistica.

Archival users and AI tools for reference and access: a study within the InterPARES Trust AI project

Evaluating the effectiveness of search tools, the ease of use of the selection and display interfaces of archival descriptions and documents, and the satisfaction of end users are not everyday activities among archive service managers. A culture of quality should instead consider actual effectiveness, adopting a user-centred design and a systematic comparison with final users. Within the international project InterPARES Trust AI, focused on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on archival functions, specific studies have been activated on user access to archives and documents from the AI perspective. This contribution presents this project, its assumptions, objectives, and results and the first results of the study in Italy on users