The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship, Henry Charles. Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, DC (2010), 123 pp., $25.00 soft cover, ISBN: 9781932326352

This study describes a content analysis of the consistency of information available on university archives and special collections websites of the institutions in the University of North Carolina system. Additionally, interviews were conducted with archivists at these universities to understand obstacles they face when posting content online. From the results a prioritized information model for university archives and special collections websites was developed.

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/7h149t772

Prioritization of Information: An Archives Website Content Analysis and Interviews to Model the Prioritization of Online Content Availability

This article offers a first exploratory critique of digital tools' socio-technical affordances in terms of support for narrative creation by media researchers. More specifically, we reflect on narrative creation processes of research, writing and story composition by Media Studies and Humanities scholars, as well as media professionals, working with crossmedia and audio-visual sources, and the pivotal ways in which digital tools inform these processes of search and storytelling. Our study proposes to add to the existing body of user-centred Digital Humanities research by presenting the insights of a cross-disciplinary user study. This involves, broadly speaking, researchers studying audio-visual materials in a co-creative design process, set to fine-tune and further develop a digital tool (technically based on linked open data) that supports audio-visual research through exploratory search. This article focuses on how 89 researchers – in both academic and professional research settings – use digital search technologies in their daily work practices to discover and explore (crossmedia, digital) audio-visual archival sources, especially when studying mediated and historical events. We focus on three user types, (1) Media Studies researchers; (2) Humanities researchers that use digitized audio-visual materials as a source for research, and (3) media professionals who need to retrieve materials for audio-visual text productions, including journalists, television/image researchers, documentalists, documentary filmmakers, digital storytellers, and media innovation experts. Our study primarily provides insights into the search, retrieval and narrative creation practices of these user groups. A user study such as this which combines different qualitative methods (focus groups with co-creative design sessions, research diaries, questionnaires), first, affords fine-grained insights. Second, it demonstrates the relevance of closely considering practices and mechanisms conditioning narrative creation, including self-reflexive approaches. Third and finally, it informs conclusions about the role of digital tools in meaning-creation processes when working with audio-visual sources, and where interaction is pivotal.

/pdf/the-researcher-as-storyteller-using-digital-tools-for-search-3xaf8mqat8.pdf

The Researcher as Storyteller: Using Digital Tools for Search and Storytelling with Audio-Visual Materials

Existing research offers fearful conclusions on the use of online archival collections, finding that historians ignore and overlook the limitations of digital sources. However, an attitudinal case ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0961000620918647

Defending the digital: Awareness of digital selectivity in historical research practice:

With an abundance of digital library projects of all types and sizes, a common practice is for larger institutions to host digital collections for smaller ones. Many institutions use analytics data...

Analytics for everybody: A literature review of analytics practices in multi-organization digital collections

Researchers increasingly engage with the digital archives built by libraries, archives, and museums, but many institutions still seek to learn more about researchers' needs and practices with these digital collections. This paper presents a user assessment study for Emblematica Online , a research digital library that provides digitized versions of emblem books from leading rare book collections. This paper examines the ways in which scholars engage with the special collections contained within Emblematica Online through analysis of interviews. The authors propose that the diverse and complex uses of digital special collections require libraries and archives to consider expanding the capabilities of their digital content and platforms.

Patricia Lampron

Papers

User Engagement with Digital Archives for Research and Teaching: A Case Study of Emblematica Online