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Dara Flinn (Unlicensed) has taken responsibility for consolidating and refining these personas by .
Remote Professor
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Local Professor (Lucy, Terrance, Justin)
- Lucy, tenured professor in the History of Art and Architecture, 45 years old. Lucy regularly needs to request material for classes, both in the archives and in classroom space in the library for larger classes.
- 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 and to recommend to students for use outside the classroom.
- 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.
- Wants to be able to find materials directly by their call number/or do a call number search (for items which she knows already) and request to use them in the archives classroom via the archive’s request system.
- Wants the ability to save all items to a “shopping cart” feature, then do one request for all the items.
- Would prefer minimal number of clicks to view results from the search interface page.
- Found an incomplete citation for 1945 materials related to a well-known 20th century architect in a book published in 1978, which indicates this material is held by your institution. Does not know the precise nature of the
document or which repository in your institution might hold it, - materials and the collection name does not precisely match any of your institution's holdings.
- Would like
a copy of this specific document- to see these specific materials, as well as the current, correct citation.
Residing overseas
Visiting/Remote Professor (Kate, Lee
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Visiting Fellow
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, Sally)
- Kate, professor in Digital Humanities and History, 38 years old. Kate is writing a book about the migration of rural populations in America after World War II.
- Kate will be in town for 3 months1 month, during which time she will be conducting research at a few different libraries and museums.
- Already has over 100 boxes of archival material identified from finding aids that she plans to request, and would prefer to submit those requests in bulk prior to her visit.
- Plans to photograph everything she finds related to her current research project. Kate has developed a system of keeping track of her photographs with the help of a spreadsheet, which she uses later to sort each file into directories with meaningful names via a Python script that she wrote a few years back. Would like to have a better way to connect this information to the source metadata, possibly by using the barcodes she often finds on archival boxes, but hasn’t had the time to work such a process out.
- Has determined that she will not have time to photograph everything, and has a small budget to fund digitization in her grant project.
- Kate prefers to *not* use OPACs, finding aid websites, digital libraries, etc. She prefers working with raw metadata. She used to work at an institution that had a Digital Humanities center, and while working closely with that department on a grant project, she picked up tricks and tools that have helped her expand her research methodologies (and not to trust the indexes provided by digital libraries, etc.).
- Kate’s also kicking around the idea for a new project right now that will explore cultural heritage metadata as text. She loves the bulk metadata exports that she has found from some libraries, but was dismayed to find out what’s missing from these records – for one example, there’s no information about the catalogers who worked on these records. Since she makes it a habit to meet and talk with public and technical services staff whenever she's doing research, she’s learned that this metadata exists elsewhere. She’s glad to know that cataloger information exists in a lot of finding aids, for instance, but she hasn't had any luck yet in getting bulk downloads of finding aids from any institutions where she’s conducted research since conceiving of this project.
- Kate dislikes (but occasionally enjoys) finding the dead end of a black box; having to start with a black box (i.e. the user interface provided by the library) in the first place; being unsure if there’s more metadata available that might assist her research.
Academic Library/Special Collections Personas (added by Matt).
- 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.
Historical Society (Added by Linda)
- Terrence, History professor, 45 years old
- Wants to easily locate information
- prefers staff find it for him
- can’t read historical documents (English is not his first language) and would prefer to see transcriptions
- If he has to view it online, it needs to be one click or less from the search page
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Remote Professor (Lee, Sally)
- Lee, tenured professor in the History of Science at Oxford, 50 years old. Lee is researching Julian Huxley and the environmental movement in the early 20th century.
- Lee will not be able to visit your institution, and prefers to search for and access material online.
- Wants to set up a virtual appointment with an archivist/librarian to talk about his project.
- Will pay to fund digitization of items relevant to his research.
- Has no familiarity with ArchivesSpace , and wants to be able to instantly peruse any digitized material and their relevant metadata (including citation line).
- Wants to be able to save and sort result sets, including identifiers for each resource.
- Needs permanent links to descriptive metadata.
- Needs permanent links to online resources.
- The collection includes bound volumes, which
she - he would like to flip through in the same way as an e-book
- 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.
Special Collections Personas (added by Susan)
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.
- .