User Personas (draft work)

Owned by Rain Michaels (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 23, 2016 by Mark Custer
17 min read
  • Use this wiki page to create user personas.

Key elements that should be included in the final personas: 

  • What are some of the daily tasks that the individual needs to do in ArchivesSpace (or if not daily, how often?)
  • What are some areas where the individual could become frustrated?
    • e.g. Rain always looks for contact information or a contact link in the footer of a website and becomes frustrated when she doesn't find it there OR 
    • e.g. Due to a long-term injury, Rain is occasionally unable to use her mouse. She becomes frustrated when the tab index is not properly set up on a web application, and she has to tab a million times before she reaches the search box.
  • What are some of the typical expectations of this individual based on the other tools she uses?
  • In addition to the above points, other fun things to include
    • A bit about personality and special interests
    • Age, gender, basic demographic information
    • Favorite online tools

 

MITRE (Business) Personas

  • Archivist / full service researcher
    • Pam, Female, 50 yrs. old
    • Answer questions for researchers and connects them to resources
  • Public Relations
    • Aimee, Female 28 yrs. old
    • Looks for cool photos to post to social media outlets and unique story ideas
  • Executive administrative assistants
    • Linda, Female 45 yrs old 
    • Quickly gets her boss what he needs either for a speech or meeting
  • Researchers / Project Managers
    • Stephen, Male, 55 yrs. old
    • Engineer researcher looking for the cost estimates used on an Air Force project from the 1970s

 

Academic Library Personas

Graduate Student

  • Background:
    • Name: Julian
    • Age: 27
    • Location: New York City
    • Year: 4th year graduate student (typically spent teaching, researching, and writing his dissertation)
    • Major: American Studies, interests include History of American Music, 20th Century Cultural & Intellectual History, Material Culture, Public Humanities
    • Technology: MacBook Air, Android phone 
  • Use case:
    • Julian is only on campus three days a week. These are the days that he teaches and holds office hours. The rest of the week, he is based in the city. Because he is only at Yale for a few days a week, he games the library online systems in order to maximize his time on campus. He checks carefully to see what he can view online and what he needs to use on site. Currently, Julian is preparing an article on representations of musicians in the popular press. At this point he is not focused on any particular musician but wants to look at newspaper clippings, posters, caricatures, and photographs for major 20th century musicians. Overall, Julian hopes to tie this work into his dissertation, focusing on Copland and his network.
    • Would appreciate anything that will make creating citations easier.
    • 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.

Undergraduate Student

  • Alex, age 19, Junior
    • Lives on campus
    • Computer savvy
    • A light library user; has never done research in special collections before and has made little to no use of databases or finding aids
    • Unfamiliar with institution’s holdings, but looking for an interesting senior essay topic that will make heavy use of primary sources at institution
    • Easily confused by jargon. Expects that searching ArchivesSpace will be intuitive (requiring no prior training) and immediately produce relevant results
    • 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.
    • Interested in accessing transcriptions and audiovisual materials when available.
    • Would like to be able to save and share links to finding aids that are of interest.

Local Researcher

  • Chris, age 70
    • Drives 45 minutes to visit library, and wants to maximize time on campus
    • Unaffiliated with institution, so access is limited to some collections, databases, and holdings
    • Does not like using computers and does not use e-mail
    • Primarily communicates with library staff in person or via telephone
    • Would like to do genealogical research on several different ancestors, but does not have any idea where to start
    • Prefers using physical, original materials over digital objects and microfilm. Chris will be frustrated to learn upon arrival at the repository that the originals cannot be accessed (due to their having been digitized or microfilmed).
    • 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.
    • Will be confused if opening several different tabs and/or windows is necessary to request one item. Would have an easier time with a simple, fluid experience that encompasses searching for collections, identifying specific folders of interest, and requesting materials.

Administrative Staff

  • Jaime, age 45, administrative assistant in the institution's President's Office
    • Works on campus, half a mile away from library
    • Windows user, comfortable using MS Office Suite
    • Always working on a tight deadline, and prefers to visit repository only to pick up specific pertinent folders
    • As Jaime is not a library employee, Jaime has not been granted access to the ArchivesSpace back end, but has been granted access to the finding aids for some restricted institutional records (the specific contents of which are not published in public finding aids). Needs to be able to easily search these semi-public finding aids and instantly request specific, restricted files at the folder level.
    • Regularly deals with accessions that contain many thousands of folders, and does not want to hunt around, scrolling endlessly, to identify the accession and box numbers that correspond to a chosen folder.

Academic Publisher

  • Morgan, age 35, photo editor for an academic publisher
    • On a tight deadline
    • Looking for appropriate photographs to publish in a professor's latest book, including a portrait of the subject and schemata or drawing of one of the subject's creations
    • Has no familiarity with ArchivesSpace and expects that searching will be confined to photographic materials only, and wants to be able to instantly peruse any digitized images and their relevant metadata (including citation line)
    • Needs to know any relevant information about copyright upfront in order to know what images to pursue, and how to go about obtaining the necessary permissions.
    • Would like to order copies of interesting images, and will be frustrated if the steps toward doing so are not immediately apparent.
    • May want to speak with staff directly, and needs to clearly understand which repository at the given institution to contact regarding any given image and how.

Remote Professor

  • Lee, a professor at Oxford
    • Found an incomplete citation for an 1845 document involving Mary and John Smith in a book published in 1968, 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, and the collection name does not precisely match any of your institution's holdings.
    • Would like a copy of this specific document, as well as the current, correct citation.
    • Residing overseas, Lee cannot visit your institution, and would prefer to search for and access this material online if possible.

 

Visiting Fellow

  • Kate, 38, professor in Comparative Literature 
    • Kate will be in town for 3 months, 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.
    • 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).

  • 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.

  • Malik, graduate student, 32 years old.
    • Works full time, has a family, online student.
    • Wants robust advanced/faceted searching to narrow search results.
    • Wants easy access to digitized versions of material, and want to be able to make digitization requests through the public interface.
    • Wants to be able to save/collate individual records from multiple searches to view together at the end of the search process.
    • Would like to search multiple repositories through one search.

  • 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.

  • D.J., general public, sports enthusiast, 50 years old.
    • Wants to locate specific items he already has in mind.
    • Is frustrated by too much information/too many search results.
    • Would prefer for staff to perform searches/locate materials on his behalf.

  • Gracie, Curator in Special Collections Library, 55 years old.
    • When desired, wants to be able to limit search results to "her" collections.
    • Wants collections data to also be discoverable through the libraries Summon search interface.

  • Anne, Research Services worker in Special Collections Library, 26 years old.
    • Wants a scrolling navigation bar and infinite scrolling for search results pages.
    • Wants to easily sort search results by title, creator, begin date, and end date.
    • Would like to easily be able to toggle search results between just collections and collections plus archival objects and digital objects.
    • When scrolling through inventories would like a horizontal ribbon that carries the relevant hierarchy information (for example series, sub-series).


University Archives/ Special Collections Personas (added by scott)

  • 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.

 

Academic Research Library/Special Collections/University Archives (added by Sue)

  • Anthony, University Archivist with 15 years of experience in UA/SC.
    • Needs to be able to search for unprocessed accessions but can't always find them because there is no way to search for "Unprocessed"
    • Wants to be able to sort collections by processing status

 

  • Andrea, Public Services Reference and Instruction Librarian, subject specialist in American History and American Studies, frequent collaborator on instruction projects with Special Collections librarians
    • Needs to quickly locate collections and items she knows are held in Special Collections in order to assist faculty in preparing classes
    • Needs to be able to identify appropriate primary sources for graduate students
    • Would like to be able to do both authorized subject and keyword searches to return collection results, rather than just narrowing down by the lists that currently appear at the left hand side of the screen
    • Needs natural language options (what is an "archival object"?)
    • Needs explanations for the icons that show up next to the search results in the returned results list

 

  • Monique, Special Collections Reference and Instruction Librarian
    • Regularly acquires collections in her subject area and supervises student workers processing these collections
    • Needs to be able to quickly locate "her" collections
    • Needs to be able to quickly identify relevant collections for instruction sessions

 

  • Nick, Academic and Events Programming, publishes articles and blog posts based on materials held in the Library
    • Needs to be able to easily locate collections that contain images and material related to Los Angeles history for publication in local public television blog
    • Needs to be able to "save" or favorite archival objects, collections, and digital objects in a shopping cart or bookmarks for later viewing

 

University Staff (Maura)

  • Betty, University Communications Office
    • Pulls photos from certain University A&SC for publication in University communications documents
    • Needs to be able to search for images, and wants to search in specific collections she knows contains the type of photos she wants
    • As of now, has to either search across all collections, or in each of her desired collections individually. Would like to be able to do an advanced search that allows her to pick specific collections to query.

 

Academic Research Library/Special Collections and Archives (Dara)

  • Scott, Technical Archivist
    • Refines metadata in special collections to agree with authorized subject, agent thesauri and databases
    • Manages digital objects
    • Needs to be able to query subject and agent terms, would like to be able to merge duplicate items

 

  • Kathleen, historian/writer
    • Regularly researches in archives for material and images related to her books on local history
    • Would like to be able to use the advanced search to limit results to collections only, not archival objects
    • Finds the navigation terms confusing; would prefer natural language terms

 

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

 

  • Bob, History enthusiast, 62 years old
    • Collects information about random historical events that he hopes to someday write about and publish
    • Spends a lot of time in archives
    • Wants photocopies of everything
    • Will use online tools, but expects them to look like traditional paper finding aids

 

  • Sally, Music Professor, 50 years old
    • Desperately wants to access a collection described in the online catalog but cannot travel
    • Will pay to fund digitization
    • The collection includes bound volumes, which she 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.

 

  • 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

 

  • Octavia Rosecliff, Historical Fiction writer, 49
    • Writing a bodice ripper based in Litchfield during the early republic
    • Doesn’t want to look anything  up herself
    • Would like information about things like bathing in the 1800s to provide historical context for various scenes
    • Needs to be able to search the collection by date

 

  • Ryan, Television Producer, 34
    • Producing a show about ghosts. Looking to find any documentation about haunting
    • Doesn’t want to do any research
    • Would like images of any homes that will be featured
    • Wants all information about image permissions and fees to be included in anything he looks at
    • Wants to be able to pay fees online

 

  • Gertie, Author and Public Speaker, 65
    • Researching her ancestor, an enslaved African-American, for a project
    • Would like access to archives and artifacts (cataloged in CollectionSpace)
    • Would like digital images available
    • Shares contextual information and research the repository can use to enhance the finding aid

 

  • Beulah, 72, Genealogist
    • She doesn’t have an e-mail address and is not happy at the idea of conducting her own search online
    • She wants to find vital records
    • She’s hoping to join the DAR and needs to have verification of her ancestor’s service

 

Search Engine Bot

  • 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.


Sally Smith, 35, is a research assistant who has been working with the same author for several years and does the initial collection screening for her academic partner.  (Provided by Kari S.)

 

  •  Wants to use an online collections database to search across the archives and manuscript and publications in the Archives and Special collections.
  • Wants to export finding aid information
  • Is frustrated that she can't export only the relevant portions from the collection description that she wants - only info from Series 5 but not the full 100pg finding aid.
  • Would like to have the Box / Folder information exportable for emailing to the Reference staff for retreival.
  • Is confused why searching is limited to within one collection, when limiting searches.

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