In a 2004 article entitled “‘Contact Us’: Archivists and Remote Users in the Digital Age,” Katharine Salzmann begins by discussing a challenge facing archivists at repositories with developing web presences. As a repository’s web presence increases, patron expectations for remote, electronic access to archival material increases, and archivists must prepare to address these changing expectations. In this article, Salzmann discusses a survey of 100 web pages of university archives to gain an understanding of the impact of increased web presence.
In her analysis, Salzmann considered the availability of online finding aids, the existence of digitized online manuscripts or publications, the existence digitized photographs, and the existence of contact information to promote contact with the repository. Her results showed that while 46% of repositories provided online finding aids (this number would surely be much larger if a similar study was done in 2010), only 7% of the repositories provided digitized document content, and only 14% of repositories provided digitized photographs. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the websites (97%) provided either a general or specific email address or provided a general contact web form.
While Salzmann’s article prompts interesting questions to be asked, further research is necessary to fully understand the questions she poses. For example, a study of the impact on the number of online finding aids added on the number of reference inquiries would better allow archivists to anticipate the effects of increased web presence. Furthermore, patron satisfaction surveys which provide information about preferable means of contacting an archives would better allow archivists to understand the best ways to facilitate and initiate patron-archivist interaction.
Salzmann, Katharine A.(2004) "'Contact Us': Archivists and Remote Users in the Digital Age", The Reference Librarian, 41: 85, 43-50.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Reading Response 8: Janice E. Ruth – “Educating the Reference Archivist”
In a 1988 article entitled “Educating the Reference Archivist,” Janice E. Ruth discusses the preparation and training recommended for preparing an archivist the perform reference duties. In conducting a literature review, Ruth concludes that discussion of the reference process has frequently been overlooked in archival literature. In analyzing literature on the topic that does exist, Ruth discusses previous emphasis on the importance of creating thorough finding aids to aid reference archivists as well as the need to not overestimate the patron’s previous experience with and knowledge of archival sources.
In discussing the lack of necessary and appropriate user studies, Ruth concludes that an understanding of patron types and patron information needs is important for both the profession and for individual repositories. User studies, the article explains, can better allow reference archivists avoid making inaccurate assumptions about the patron’s knowledge of archival resources. Ruth also argues that an examination of communication theory with a focus on interpersonal interaction should be used to compliment archival science literature on the subject of archival reference. Archivists must learn to ask open rather than closed questions and must demonstrate content-based listening.
I found this article to be particularly insightful as it advocated the need for archivists to study interpersonal communication and incorporate lessons from this field into literature on archives. While this type of analysis is frequently discusses in library reference, archivists have tended to ignored studying specific aspects of interpersonal communication. However, like many articles that discuss reference in the archival repository, this article ignores the importance of answering questions by remote users. When answering this type of question, user education is of less significance, while having the ability to personally identify useful material and craft a response is critical for the archivist.
Janice E. Ruth, “Educating the Reference Archivist,” American Archivist 51 (Summer 1988), 266-276.
In discussing the lack of necessary and appropriate user studies, Ruth concludes that an understanding of patron types and patron information needs is important for both the profession and for individual repositories. User studies, the article explains, can better allow reference archivists avoid making inaccurate assumptions about the patron’s knowledge of archival resources. Ruth also argues that an examination of communication theory with a focus on interpersonal interaction should be used to compliment archival science literature on the subject of archival reference. Archivists must learn to ask open rather than closed questions and must demonstrate content-based listening.
I found this article to be particularly insightful as it advocated the need for archivists to study interpersonal communication and incorporate lessons from this field into literature on archives. While this type of analysis is frequently discusses in library reference, archivists have tended to ignored studying specific aspects of interpersonal communication. However, like many articles that discuss reference in the archival repository, this article ignores the importance of answering questions by remote users. When answering this type of question, user education is of less significance, while having the ability to personally identify useful material and craft a response is critical for the archivist.
Janice E. Ruth, “Educating the Reference Archivist,” American Archivist 51 (Summer 1988), 266-276.
Internship Reflection
Although there is still work to do on the creation and editing of the archives outreach video, since the IU fall semester is ending soon, I thought I would take this opportunity to review the many positive experiences I have taken away from my internship at the archives this fall. As filming and editing of the video progresses, I will be sure to continue to update this blog to describe my progress and share the final product.
Firstly, I have really enjoyed having the opportunity to work with all of the archival staff at the IU Archives. Working there for a semester allowed me to soak up a good deal of insight and information about the archival profession, and I have truly appreciated being able to intern in a workplace that accommodates this type of learning. The archival staff have all been very willing to share insight and have also been very willing to listen to and provide feedback regard my ideas and work, and I feel that these qualities have made my internship a very valuable one.
Processing the Ruth Engs papers was a very useful exercise, as it gave me more experience with evaluating a collection and making arrangement decisions and more experience with creating a full finding aid, including the container list, biographical note, and scope and content note. Assisting with the answering of reference questions has allowed me to further develop my reference and research skills, and I also really enjoyed getting the opportunity to help patrons with their inquiries while getting to learn a bit about the history of IU in the process. The creation of the outreach video has also been a great opportunity that has given me the chance to conceptually develop an outreach project as well as develop the technical skills needed to produce and edit video, which will certainly be a useful skill in creating similar videos in the future.
Firstly, I have really enjoyed having the opportunity to work with all of the archival staff at the IU Archives. Working there for a semester allowed me to soak up a good deal of insight and information about the archival profession, and I have truly appreciated being able to intern in a workplace that accommodates this type of learning. The archival staff have all been very willing to share insight and have also been very willing to listen to and provide feedback regard my ideas and work, and I feel that these qualities have made my internship a very valuable one.
Processing the Ruth Engs papers was a very useful exercise, as it gave me more experience with evaluating a collection and making arrangement decisions and more experience with creating a full finding aid, including the container list, biographical note, and scope and content note. Assisting with the answering of reference questions has allowed me to further develop my reference and research skills, and I also really enjoyed getting the opportunity to help patrons with their inquiries while getting to learn a bit about the history of IU in the process. The creation of the outreach video has also been a great opportunity that has given me the chance to conceptually develop an outreach project as well as develop the technical skills needed to produce and edit video, which will certainly be a useful skill in creating similar videos in the future.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Preparing for Filming
Since the filming of the outreach video will take place on this coming Thursday (December 16th), I have had plenty of time to prepare for the filming of the video. This past week, I have had plenty of time to prepare for the filming, editing, and creation of the video. One of our goals for the video is to include images of student records from previous eras that have already been collected at the archives to give student groups an idea of what sort of records we collect, and to generally generate interest in the concept of archives and student records. So, over the past few days, I have identified various examples of student records that should be included in the video and scanned them onto our hard drive.
After the filming of the video, I will identify certain points in the video where the still images that were scanned will be inserted. The audio of the person speaking on camera will play while the video will be replaced by the scanned image. After searching through some of our collections at the archives, I am excited about the examples of student records that will be included in the video. For example, I scanned the cover of a 1968 edition of The Spectator, a student newspaper at IU, which featured a political cartoon. I also scanned a flyer for the Jordan River Revue, a student production, from 1959. Also featured will be a program for the IU Glee and Mandolin Club from around the turn of the century. My co-intern Amanda was kind enough to take a photo of several minute books from the IU Board of Aeons from the early 20th century.
The goal in selecting different records to include in the video was to represent the wide variety of organizations as well as the wide variety in types of records that we are interested in collecting. Photographs and posters will be represented as will minutes, publications, and more text-based records. This balance between more visual and more text-base records will demonstrate the variety of student records that are of interest.
I also spent some time this past week learning how to use the video-editing software with some hands-on practice. Since I have no previous experience with video editing, I felt that it was a good idea to use some time this week to get acclimated with iMovie so that, once the actual film has been created, I will have a better understanding of how to edit the various clips into a cleanly-produced full movie. On Thursday, I took a few sample clips using the SLIS camera up in the archives processing room. I then took the camera down to the Information Commons in the Wells Library, where many of the computers are equipped with the video editing software needed to create this movie. After a bit of trial-and-error, I learned how to export the video clips into iMovie, edit the length of clips, add transitions between various clips, and add titles and captions to the video.
After the filming of the video, I will identify certain points in the video where the still images that were scanned will be inserted. The audio of the person speaking on camera will play while the video will be replaced by the scanned image. After searching through some of our collections at the archives, I am excited about the examples of student records that will be included in the video. For example, I scanned the cover of a 1968 edition of The Spectator, a student newspaper at IU, which featured a political cartoon. I also scanned a flyer for the Jordan River Revue, a student production, from 1959. Also featured will be a program for the IU Glee and Mandolin Club from around the turn of the century. My co-intern Amanda was kind enough to take a photo of several minute books from the IU Board of Aeons from the early 20th century.
The goal in selecting different records to include in the video was to represent the wide variety of organizations as well as the wide variety in types of records that we are interested in collecting. Photographs and posters will be represented as will minutes, publications, and more text-based records. This balance between more visual and more text-base records will demonstrate the variety of student records that are of interest.
I also spent some time this past week learning how to use the video-editing software with some hands-on practice. Since I have no previous experience with video editing, I felt that it was a good idea to use some time this week to get acclimated with iMovie so that, once the actual film has been created, I will have a better understanding of how to edit the various clips into a cleanly-produced full movie. On Thursday, I took a few sample clips using the SLIS camera up in the archives processing room. I then took the camera down to the Information Commons in the Wells Library, where many of the computers are equipped with the video editing software needed to create this movie. After a bit of trial-and-error, I learned how to export the video clips into iMovie, edit the length of clips, add transitions between various clips, and add titles and captions to the video.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Reading Response 7: Chute on Outreach at the University Archives
Tamar G. Chute’s 2000 article entitled “Selling the College and University Archives: Current Research Perspectives,” provides an analysis of the importance of outreach for college and university archives and discusses specific approaches that have both failed and succeeded. The author based the analysis in this article on testimony from 8 different repositories regarding outreach efforts.
In this piece, Chute defines outreach as “anything that puts the archives and the archivist in contact with the public.” Chute also discusses the division the notion of outreach into direct and indirect varieties. Direct outreach refers to any outreach activity that involved direct contact between an individual and archival material or an archivist. Indirect outreach refers to the impact of an archival repository on a community in general, and encompasses the ability of an archives to generate interest amongst people who have not visited the repository.
In this article, Chute argues that outreach is a core function of a working archivist, and is of equal importance to appraisal, arrangement, and description, and that outreach should efforts should be steady and consistent. Based on analysis of the 8 repositories, Chute writes that students, faculty, and staff should be the primary targets of outreach efforts. With regard to strategies, Chute discusses the importance of exhibits, presentations, listservs, effective web design, the use of the media to promote a repository and its collection. Chute also identifies several strategizes for analyzing the success of an outreach efforts; archivists should evaluate the widespread impact of the effort, the ability of the effort to teach potential users how archives can be useful, the promotion of particular collections of interest through the effort, the ability of an outreach effort to provide historical information about the institution, and the ability of the outreach effort to communicate the usefulness of archival staff and material.
While this article predates the popularity of social media as a means of online promotion, the strategies discussed in this article are all significant outreach strategies which should be considered by archivist. The advice provided in this article could be improved by an expanding of the target audience to include occupational users outside of the institution.
Tamar G. Chute. “Selling the College and University Archives: Current Research Perspectives,” Archival Issues, 25.1&2 (2000), 33-48.
In this piece, Chute defines outreach as “anything that puts the archives and the archivist in contact with the public.” Chute also discusses the division the notion of outreach into direct and indirect varieties. Direct outreach refers to any outreach activity that involved direct contact between an individual and archival material or an archivist. Indirect outreach refers to the impact of an archival repository on a community in general, and encompasses the ability of an archives to generate interest amongst people who have not visited the repository.
In this article, Chute argues that outreach is a core function of a working archivist, and is of equal importance to appraisal, arrangement, and description, and that outreach should efforts should be steady and consistent. Based on analysis of the 8 repositories, Chute writes that students, faculty, and staff should be the primary targets of outreach efforts. With regard to strategies, Chute discusses the importance of exhibits, presentations, listservs, effective web design, the use of the media to promote a repository and its collection. Chute also identifies several strategizes for analyzing the success of an outreach efforts; archivists should evaluate the widespread impact of the effort, the ability of the effort to teach potential users how archives can be useful, the promotion of particular collections of interest through the effort, the ability of an outreach effort to provide historical information about the institution, and the ability of the outreach effort to communicate the usefulness of archival staff and material.
While this article predates the popularity of social media as a means of online promotion, the strategies discussed in this article are all significant outreach strategies which should be considered by archivist. The advice provided in this article could be improved by an expanding of the target audience to include occupational users outside of the institution.
Tamar G. Chute. “Selling the College and University Archives: Current Research Perspectives,” Archival Issues, 25.1&2 (2000), 33-48.
Reading Response 6: Kristin E. Martin on Remote Reference
In a 2001 article entitled “Analysis of Remote Reference Correspondence at a Large Academic Manuscripts Collection,” Kristin E. Martin analyzes nearly 600 pieces of correspondence between patrons and employees of the Southern Historical Collection and General and Literary Manuscripts (SHC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1995 to 1999.
In this article, Martin makes several insightful hypotheses about the impact on the rise of online archival content on the nature of patron interactions with archives. She states that, as archival online presence has grown, so has the popularity of the use of email as a means of contacting an archival repository. She also observes that patrons’ inquiries have become increasingly specific as more online content has been made available, and that patron bases have grown more diverse and more inclusive of recreational users. A quantitative analysis of the correspondence from this span supported all of Martin’s observations and hypotheses. Also, from 1995 to 1999 at this repository, the number of what Martin calls “personal users” doubled, while the number of non-personal users increased by 30%.
While these results are somewhat dated now, Martin’s scholarship is highly relevant for any archival repository interested in developing an increased web presence. This scholarship clearly shows that the process of answering reference inquiries can be modified to best adapt to changing patronage. Archivists must be sure that online documents contain the proper contextual information so that novice users can better evaluate and understand this content. Generally speaking, archivists also must devote more resources to the answering of reference inquiries, and the process of responding to email inquiries can be made more efficient by the development of a database which stores responses to older inquiries that can be revisited in the case of repeat or similar questions.
Kristin E. Martin, "Analysis of Remote Reference Correspondence at a Large Academic Manuscript Collection," The American Archivist, 64 (Spring/Summer 2001), 17-42.
In this article, Martin makes several insightful hypotheses about the impact on the rise of online archival content on the nature of patron interactions with archives. She states that, as archival online presence has grown, so has the popularity of the use of email as a means of contacting an archival repository. She also observes that patrons’ inquiries have become increasingly specific as more online content has been made available, and that patron bases have grown more diverse and more inclusive of recreational users. A quantitative analysis of the correspondence from this span supported all of Martin’s observations and hypotheses. Also, from 1995 to 1999 at this repository, the number of what Martin calls “personal users” doubled, while the number of non-personal users increased by 30%.
While these results are somewhat dated now, Martin’s scholarship is highly relevant for any archival repository interested in developing an increased web presence. This scholarship clearly shows that the process of answering reference inquiries can be modified to best adapt to changing patronage. Archivists must be sure that online documents contain the proper contextual information so that novice users can better evaluate and understand this content. Generally speaking, archivists also must devote more resources to the answering of reference inquiries, and the process of responding to email inquiries can be made more efficient by the development of a database which stores responses to older inquiries that can be revisited in the case of repeat or similar questions.
Kristin E. Martin, "Analysis of Remote Reference Correspondence at a Large Academic Manuscript Collection," The American Archivist, 64 (Spring/Summer 2001), 17-42.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Planning for Outreach Video
As part the process of planning for the creation of the outreach video for my internship, I have spent some time researching which audio editing software will be best for editing the film once actual recording has occurred. This research has been informative and significant for several reasons. Firstly, in order to proceed with the project, I will need to know which software program will be best suited for my needs. Secondly, it will be beneficial to have a basic understanding of how to use the software so that the interface is not completely foreign to me when I begin editing the film.
After doing some research on the web, consulting both reviews and instruction manuals, I have decided that iMovie will be the best software option to use. I also considered Final Cut Pro; but, since I have little experience with video editing, I decided that the user friendly nature and simplicity of the program would best help me complete the project efficiently.
Furthermore, iMovie has the capability to include all of the various effects and has all of the different video editing tools that I will need for my project. First, the software has the capability to insert smooth, professional-quality transitions between various film clips that have been edited together to make one continuous film clip. Since this video will feature several different "scenes," the ability to add these transitions will be critical. Furthermore, iMovie also has the ability to add text captions over video and in between video clips. This capability will be handy since it will be important to add captions providing the name and role of the speaker as well as briefly describing some images of student records that will be shown during the video. This brings me to the final important capability of iMovie; in the video, I plan on including still images of particularly interesting student records that we already have in our collection during the video. In these instances, the archivist speaking will be heard, but, instead of seeing the archivist speaking on the screen, the viewer will see the selected image. iMovie provides the capability to split the audio and video and replace the video with an image in this particular way.
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