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Brief summary:
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The paper
highlights the theoretical and empirical evidences of archival information
access issues for final users. So, after the presentation of a case study
of an archival portal implemented with an user-centered
approach, the paper outlines some possible strategies and tools to support
a more effective design of online finding aids
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Content:
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The paper
starts from a survey of the recent scientific literature demonstrating how
the traditional paradigm of “heavy” archival mediation has had to come to
grips with the new web environment, where users are basically free from any
mediation. So from the final users’ point of view, archival informative
mediation on the web is suffering much more than what archivists usually
accept. The starting point for re-thinking archival mediation is the
principle that “output is not input”: the compliance to international
archival standards is a necessary condition, but not sufficient to
guarantee the usability of archives online.
The
paper, before proposing some elements to guide the drawing of a new model
(built to ensure quality to online finding aids in terms of user needs),
presents the case study of a huge archival portal based on an user-centered approach. In particular, if during the
formative fase the portal prototype was tested
adopting a user studies research, now with the service active it is possible
to compare those data with the web analytics results.
The
condition to build up an efficient and sustainable development model,
integrating existing international archival standards, is to start from
digital library and information science models, combined with user studies
methodologies. Moreover, it will be necessary to build up a shared
comparative evaluation framework for archival user studies, to facilitate
new research projects in this area.
To conclude, the expected impact of this new model will be
measurable both at instrumental level, offering the basis to develop
toolkits and guidelines, and at professional level, contributing to enrich
the set of skills for future archival information mediators
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Scientific contribution:
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The paper
will contribute to archival science by:
a)
giving a critical state of the art about finding aids issues in the
web environment, based on the last contributions at international level;ì
b)
proposing the necessity to re-think the
traditional archival techniques about the creation and communication of
finding aids, coming back to the original spirit of ICA international standards: centrality
of final users access to archives, reduction of the mediation played by
archivists, distinction between information input and its output, etc.
c)
forecasting future research lines towards the definition of useful models
to guide the development of quality online archival displays, integrating ICA international
standards
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Keywords:
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archival description, archival mediation, archives online,
international archival standards, online finding aids, quality models,
usability, user needs, user studies, web access
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