The following personas seem to group together under the category of "undergraduate student" – please consolidate into one or two personas with very specific stories.
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.
Undergraduate Student
...
Claryn Spies (Unlicensed) has taken responsibility for consolidating and refining these personas by .
This persona consolidates “Nigel,” “Donna Doe,” “Alex,” and “Madison.”
Alex, age 19, undergraduate student
- Unfamiliar with institution’s holdings, but looking for an interesting senior essay topic that will make heavy use of primary sources at institution.
- Has never done research in special collections before and is unfamiliar with common restrictions on access.
- Does not know what a finding aid is. Easily confused by archival jargon. Expects that searching
- will be intuitive (requiring no prior training) and immediately produce relevant results.
- Lives on campus, but dislikes having to go to the library, and prefers working on a computer. Would like to search for and instantly view online everything that is fully digitized. Will be frustrated if it isn't immediately obvious whether or not materials have been digitized.
- Expects search results to appear in order of relevance. Is frustrated by text heavy records that require scrolling or to determine if relevant.
- Interested in accessing
- audiovisual materials when available.
- Doesn’t like deciphering cursive and 19th century handwriting, and would prefer to read and search digitized transcriptions whenever possible.
- Would like to be able to save
- finding aids that are of interest
Historical Society (Linda)
- Madison, Middle school student, age 13
- Creating a film for history day focused on the Litchfield Female Academy
- Doesn’t know what a finding aid is, but has a basic understanding of primary sources
- Wants digital images to include in her project
- Has great difficulty reading anything that isn’t transcribed
Special Collections Personas (added by Susan)
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
- in one place for future reference, and to share links to items of interest with professors and other students.