AS02 Script

Open Morae

Open website:

http://aspace.hudmol.com:7310/repositories/5/archival_objects/8157

Contingency plan: return participant to http://aspace.hudmol.com:7310/repositories/5/resources/13 if they get lost

Thanks so much for coming in today, we really appreciate your time and thoughts.

So, let me tell you a little bit about what we are looking at today. The Harvard Library is working with a number of partners to build a new application for researchers to find our archival holdings—think of it as sort of a Hollis for archives.

[Inquire--understand what archives are? Use this paragraph as a guide based on individual.] Archives are collections of materials created, received, or assembled by a person, a family, or institutions. These collections can be very large, containing numerous boxes of different kinds of materials--correspondence, writings, objects, photographs, artwork, even clothing--from many different times, places, and creators so researchers have to do some more specific kinds of pre-work when they want to make use of archives to understand what’s in an archive and what might be most useful to their projects.

The development of this application is currently active and so what we’d like to do today is talk with you as you use this system so we can report back to the development team and help shape the final decisions for how this application will work. You’ve probably heard this process referred to as “user testing” and it is, but what we’re testing is the site you are using, not you. Everything you notice, anything you like or hate, everything you struggle with or experience as successful is really useful information for us. As you use the site, please think out loud: tell me about what you’re looking at, what you’re trying to do, and what you’re thinking.

If this sounds good to you, with your permission, we’ll record what happens on the screen and our conversation. The recording will only be used to help us figure out how to improve the site, and it won’t be seen by anyone except the people working on this website. For our records, I’ll ask you to sign a simple permission form for us. It just says that we have permission to record you, and that the recording will only be seen by the people working on this site.

Present form and pen

Start recorder as participant is signing, confirm http://aspace.hudmol.com:7310/repositories/5/archival_objects/8157

Do you have any questions before we get started?

Before we get into the application, I have just a few quick questions.

What’s your year here at Harvard?

Undergrad: Have you selected a concentration? / Grad: What’s your field of study?

Have you ever used an archive? For your own interest? In a class?

Great, thanks, now we can start looking at things. This is ArchivesSpace and we’re going to set the stage for your encounter with this application. So, the story is that  your professor wants you to make substantive use of the John Jeffries Archive, which is held by Harvard’s Houghton Library. The professor gives you a site to use to look the papers up online and learn some more about them and what parts of the archive you might want to see before going into the library to use the collection. You’ve gone to that site, entered “John Jeffries” in a search bar and the first link you clicked opened up to this.

[First impressions]

Tell me about what you see here and what you think this page is showing you.

[Finding aid overview]

Ok, your first step is to get a sense of all materials there are in the Jeffries collection that could help you write this paper. Staying within this site, how would you get an overview of what’s in this collection?

[Locate group of non-specific materials - compute time on task values]

Great, thanks. So, more specifically, for your paper, you know you want to write about Jeffries’ ballooning trip, which was the first ever to cross the English Channel. Use this site to find some materials that will help you write about Jeffries’ ballooning.

[Make use of bioghist or scope/content - compute time on task values]

Using this site, can you identify who Jeffries flew with in his trip across the Channel?

[Locate specific item - phrase works to search - compute time on task values]

You’re specifically interested in Jeffries’ own reflections on his balloon ascent. Using this site, identify an item that Jeffries wrote reflecting on the trip and then let me know when he wrote it.

[Locate group of non-specific materials - compute time on task values]

In the course of your research you note that Jeffries was also a surgeon and you think it might be illuminating to learn more about his career as a surgeon in context of his extracurricular explorations as a balloonist. How would you go about locating his surgical writings?

That’s it. Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about your experience using this site?

Thanks again.

[End and save Morae session]