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- George, professional musician and amateur historian, 56 years old. Working on an article on Sousa's relationship with the University of Illinois between 1908 and 2008 to be published American School Band Journal.
- Needs to execute keyword searches simultaneously across multiple repositories' content for all arrangements and recordings of Sousa's "Stars and Stripes March" created and/or performed at the University of Illinois.
- Needs to have all relevant content from each repository displayed alphabetically under that repository's holdings by the title of the archival collection, and with the specific box and folder locations for that collection's content.
- Would like to also have access to any relevant digital content (i.e., photographic imagery and sound recordings) as part of his search results, with the descriptive information for each digital object listed first with a link directly to that digital content.
- Tends to get short when he attempts to setup a research appointment to look at specific archival content that he believes is in that repository, only to discover that it is actually in another repository on the other side of campus.
- Maynard, professional archivist with over 30 years of experience as University Archivist, 60 years old.
- Needs to quickly located correspondence of University President George Stoddard regarding 1952 military training guidelines for the university's ROTC program for the current President of the University.
- Wants to quickly search by the specific record series number for the President George Stoddard Records to locate the correspondence series within that specific record group which he vaguely remembers as being 2/10/1.
- Knows that a specific box and folder listing of that specific record series content is linked as a PDF file from that series' collection record.
- Must also have the box location information so he can quickly go to that box and find the correspondence that he knows exists.
- Becomes grumpy when he is forced to read long lists of unrelated collection content or has to wait more than 15 seconds for the collections management system to pull up the collection record for that record series.
- Rory, new young professional reference archivist with less than one year's experience, 26 years old.
- Receives an email reference inquiry from a researcher in Australia who has found digital image of Herbert L. Clarke holding his 1907 C. G. Conn cornet while a member of the Sousa Band. The researcher knows the archives has many of Clarke's cornets, and needs to know what the serial number of that instrument. The low-resolution image doesn't provide the researcher has found doesn't provide enough visual image to determine which horn is in the picture.
- Rory needs to know which box and folder of the Clarke collection has the original photograph that was digitized.
- Once the photograph has been found, he must then locate the two 1907 Conn cornets in the Clarke collection to determine which was being held in the photograph.
- Rory is a bass guitarist with no experience working with brass instruments, and tends to get grumpy when he cannot quickly locate things for researchers.
- Nancy, photo journalist with the Washington post looking for a photograph of Duke Ellington to illustrate an article on the Ellington School for next morning's publication, 37 years old with a profound sense of entitlement because she works for the Post
- Needs to browse all online available images of Ellington sitting at the piano.
- Has no time to access images through the Ellington collection finding aid because she is under a 6pm deadline from her editors, and it's 4:30pm and the archives closes at 5pm.
- Has a clear idea of what type of image she needs for the article but has no knowledge of what images are available in the archives.
- She bristles that the thought that the archives' staff must be able to confirm who owns the IP rights to the selected image, and the Ellington archivist must grant the Post permission to use the image before can be published.
- Aaron, University Archivist with fifteen years of archives experience working in small and medium size archives as a lone arranger with two archival volunteers, 43 years old.
- When on the reference desk needs to have the ability to quickly toggle between the staff-side and public user interfaces when viewing full-length online collection finding aids.
- Must have the ability to dynamically correct typos and other errors found in finding aids created by the archival volunteers.
- Must have the ability to immediately display the corrected finding aids once the correction has been made in both the staff-side and public views of that finding.
- He has little patience with technologies that require multiple windows to be open and complicated key sequences to be able to toggle between the staff and public user interfaces of the tool.
- Norma, director of a small university archives and special collections with a good working knowledge basic computer programming and EAD because her Library's Systems Office is unwilling to work with any open source software program that require significant reprogramming time to meet the archives user needs, 35 years old.
- Needs to be able to simply modify the layout of collection content in her archives' collection management tool, and be able to modify the colors of this content display to match the color scheme and themes of her archives website.
- Doesn't have time to learn new computer programming techniques.
- Bristles at the thought of not having enough time to adequately focus on the historical interpretation of her archives' collections for new exhibits.