Archivists
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Aimee This is someone who occasionally looks for something they need to support something else they are doing (e.g. a cool photo to post to social media, or a quote to support a speech. These uses are not in ASpace often and need to be fast when they are). How does Aimee want to see search results returned to her when looking for something to post to social media? If her search returns 100 results, how many of those will she actually look at? How will she quickly get the item she needs?
Nick Needs to be able to "save" or favorite archival objects, collections, and digital objects in a shopping cart or bookmarks for later viewing. Does he have some kind of account?
ASpace does not have user account functionality, so no. This would be a great feature to add. (Sue)Ryan Wants to be able to pay fees online. Is this something that can already be done through ASpace? This brings up a LOT of considerations. What already exists? What do institutions do now?
Yale does not currently support online payments, but would very much like to, and is hoping to begin doing so using the functionality in Aeon (which already has the user accounts, history, and agreements necessary for such an endeavor) in the coming year. (Claryn)
Professional researcher
Stephan is an engineer researcher looking for the cost estimates used on an Air Force project from the 1970s. What does this workflow look like? How does he expect to see the results in ASpace? What will he do next once he gets those results?
Academic researcher - professor
Sally Wants to access digital images in the same place as the description, without having to click forward and back. She wants to see the finding aid, have the digital object open in a new window, and easily be able to close it to click on the next item from the finding aid. What about an overlay rather than a new window, since other personas indicate that new windows are a huge negative?
I agree that new windows are a huge negative for users who have difficulty navigating the web, and think an overlay would be great functionality! (Claryn)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. Does ASpace already integrate this? Or is this done through a separate system? Use USC’s work to integrate Aeon (http://www.atlas-sys.com/aeon/ and https://github.com/smoil/aeon_requests)? ASpace does not integrate this. We used the ASpace API to construct a call request that pulls the info into Aeon. (Sue)
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Julian would appreciate anything that will make creating citations easier. What would make this possible? Displaying citation information, already correctly formatted, on the record? What can he currently get vs. what would be most useful to him?
I'm biased toward the variety of citation tools JSTOR provides, as researchers writing in different disciplines will have different needs. (Claryn)Julian is curious about which of Yale's collections other researchers in his field have found useful, and whether other researchers have published material on Copland using sources held by Yale. What would help satisfy this curiosity that makes sense and is easy to maintain in ASpace? What already exists? There are significant privacy concerns with this sort of request that would need further discussion.
Janet Wants to be able to annotate/tag results for her own use. Is this functionality already in ASpace? Should it be? Phase II?
Janet Needs permanent links to descriptive metadata. Does this already exist in ASpace? Should it be written on the screen (perhaps in the style of Youtube or Instagram share tools)?
Janet Needs permanent links to online resources. Does this already exist in ASpace? Should it be written on the screen (perhaps in the style of Youtube or Instagram share tools)?
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Alex Will be frustrated if it isn't immediately obvious whether or not materials have been digitized. If materials have been digitized, this user wants to be able to access them instantly. (make this part of the same test above) What already exists in ASpace for this? What do users typically expect to see?
Alex Would like to be able to save and share links to finding aids that are of interest. What already exists in ASpace for this? What do users typically expect to see?
Madison Has great difficulty reading anything that isn’t transcribed. Should transcriptions be available on records (or are they already)? More information on what exists or should exist would be great.
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Is not cognizant of restrictions surrounding the institution's student records and alumni files, and needs to be clearly informed of any such restrictions up-front. How is this currently handled?
At Yale, this information appears at the top of each finding aid (in the overview), and sometimes at the series level. Restrictions are generally not visible to the user at the box or folder level, so if a researcher, searching for a specific term in a finding aid, skips the overview (as they often do), they sometimes end up unwittingly requesting restricted materials, which our staff then has to manually investigate, cancel, and explain to the researcher. The latter issues can be handled adequately in Aeon, but it would be great if there were a way to make restrictions visible at the box level from the get-go. (Claryn)- Gertie Shares contextual information and research the repository can use to enhance the finding aid. How is this currently handled? How do you imagine she would share this information? With a phone call? Some kind of contextualized form? Other?
- Wants to be able to add everything he is interested in using to a set, then download all the metadata into an excel spreadsheet. Is this something ASpace already does? Wants to do?