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- Wants modernized HTML that it can parse quickly and make sense of.
- Thinks sitemaps are user friendly.
- Likes embedded metadata that use a standardized vocabulary, like Schema.org (and so, would love to see the Architypes extension, https://www.w3.org/community/architypes/, developed and accepted, so that it could start showing up in delivery systems like ArchivesSpace, AtoM, XTF, etc.).
Special Collections Personas (added by Susan)
Jane Doe is a graduate student in art history from the University of Washington. This is the first year of her dissertation research, and she has only done one other small archival project. She found a collection at Harvard through a finding aid that came up in a Google search.
- Wants to know how to get in touch with the repository to ask questions about material availability, visiting policies, etc.
- Wants to set up an appointment with a librarian or archivist to talk about her project.
- Is not familiar with the area and wonders how to get to the repository. Is it close to public transit?
- Wonders if there is other similar material at Harvard. Can she easily figure out a way to search Harvard’s archival holdings from the finding aid page she found?
- Uses Zotero and wants to save any relevant collections she finds into her Zotero Library.
- Is excited about the material she found and wants to be able to e-mail the finding aid directly to her academic advisor.
- Wants to request material from the collection for use in the reading room.
- Is also interested in newsletters, zines, and other printed material. She knows that this type of material might not have a finding aid. How can she find out if the repository has published material?
Janet Doe, a graduate student in history at Stanford University, is doing research on material culture in early New England. She is relatively experienced in archival research, and makes it a point to talk with archivists about her project as part of her discovery plan. She uses social media to share highlights of her research visits.
- Wants to find relevant sources, regardless of format (manuscript, print, image) across all repositories at Harvard.
- Needs easily accessible contact and policy information about each repository, including how to plan a visit and how to request materials for use in the repository’s reading room.
- Needs to be able to limit searches by broad date spans.
- Is interested in finding online resources where available.
- Wants to be able to save and sort result sets, including locations and identifiers for each resource.
- Wants to be able to annotate/tag results for her own use.
- Wants to be able to integrate results in citation management software (such as RefWorks, Zotero)
- Needs permanent links to descriptive metadata.
- Needs permanent links to online resources.
Justin Doe, age 55, a professor, in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, specializing in German and Medieval art. Justin regularly needs to request material for the classes he brings to the archive.
- Wants to be able to find them directly by their call number which he knows already and request to use them in the archives classroom via AEON, the archive’s request system.
- Wants to be able to find what has been digitized easily for students to use outside the classroom.
- Wants to do a call number search that takes him directly to the item he wants.
- Wants the ability to save all his items to a “shopping cart” feature, then do one AEON request for all the items.
Donna Doe is an undergraduate student, 19, who has yet to declare her major. Donna is taking “English 50a. Poetry of the Long 18th Century”. She is writing a paper on Keats and her professor is requiring her to use at least one primary resource. She heard that the special collections library has an extensive Keats collection.
- Dislikes having to go to the library, so she always wants first everything that is digitized online.
- Is frustrated when her searching pulls up too many results and in alphabetical order by name, not by relevance.
- Doesn’t understand what all the labels mean
- Wants to get a list of fully-digitized items only.
- Wants to contact a librarian for help.
Leonard Doe, 42, is an independent scholar looking to apply for a month-long fellowship at Special Collections library. He needs to include a list of resources he will be using in his research application, which is on early English ballads.
- Needs to be able to do complicated boolean searching, limited by a date range.
- Wants to know what is digitized easily.
- Wants to be able to add everything he is interested in using to a set, then download all the metadata into an excel spreadsheet.