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- Background:
- Name: Julian
- Age: 27
- Location: New York City
- Year: 4th year graduate student (typically spent teaching, researching, and writing his dissertation)
- Major: American Studies, interests include History of American Music, 20th Century Cultural & Intellectual History, Material Culture, Public Humanities
- Technology: MacBook Air, Android phone
- Use case:
- Julian is only on campus three days a week. These are the days that he teaches and holds office hours. The rest of the week, he is based in the city. Because he is only at Yale for a few days a week, he games the library online systems in order to maximize his time on campus. He checks carefully to see what he can view online and what he needs to use on site. Currently, Julian is preparing an article on representations of musicians in the popular press. At this point he is not focused on any particular musician but wants to look at newspaper clippings, posters, caricatures, and photographs for major 20th century musicians. Overall, Julian hopes to tie this work into his dissertation, focusing on Copland and his network.
- Julian is only on campus three days a week. These are the days that he teaches and holds office hours. The rest of the week, he is based in the city. Because he is only at Yale for a few days a week, he games the library online systems in order to maximize his time on campus. He checks carefully to see what he can view online and what he needs to use on site. Currently, Julian is preparing an article on representations of musicians in the popular press. At this point he is not focused on any particular musician but wants to look at newspaper clippings, posters, caricatures, and photographs for major 20th century musicians. Overall, Julian hopes to tie this work into his dissertation, focusing on Copland and his network.
Undergraduate Student
- Alex, age 19, Junior
- Lives on campus
- Computer savvy
- A light library user; has never done research in special collections before and has made little to no use of databases
- Unfamiliar with institution’s holdings, but looking for an interesting senior essay topic that will make heavy use of primary sources at institution
Academic Library/Special Collections Personas (added by Matt).
- Nigel, undergraduate, 19 years old.
- Wants to easily locate specific items for course work.
- Prefers not to visit the Special Collections Library, or the Special Collections Library website/discovery tool.
- Wants easy access to digitized versions of materials.
- Is frustrated by text heavy records that require scrolling to determine if relevant.
- Malik, graduate student, 32 years old.
- Works full time, has a family, online student.
- Wants robust advanced/faceted searching to narrow search results.
- Wants easy access to digitized versions of material, and want to be able to make digitization requests through the public interface.
- Wants to be able to save/collate individual records from multiple searches to view together at the end of the search process.
- Would like to search multiple repositories through one search.
- Lucy, tenured professor, 39 years old.
- Wants robust advanced/faceted searching to narrow search results.
- Would like use the public interface to request materials for use in the reading room prior to their arrival.
- Would like streamlined access to digitized content for classroom use.
- D.J., general public, sports enthusiast, 50 years old.
- Wants to locate specific items he already has in mind.
- Is frustrated by too much information/too many search results.
- Would prefer for staff to perform searches/locate materials on his behalf.
- Gracie, Curator in Special Collections Library, 55 years old.
- When desired, wants to be able to limit search results to "her" collections.
- Wants collections data to also be discoverable through the libraries Summon search interface.
- Anne, Research Services worker in Special Collections Library, 26 years old.
- Wants a scrolling navigation bar and infinite scrolling for search results pages.
- Wants to easily sort search results by title, creator, begin date, and end date.
- Would like to easily be able to toggle search results between just collections and collections plus archival objects and digital objects.
- When scrolling through inventories would like a horizontal ribbon that carries the relevant hierarchy information (for example series, sub-series).
Local Researcher
- Morgan, age 70
- Drives 45 minutes to visit library, and wants to maximize time on campus
- Unaffiliated with institution, so access is limited to some collections, databases, and holdings
- Does not like using computers
- Does not use e-mail
- Primarily communicates with library staff in person or via telephone