User Responses to Finding Aids

User Responses to
Finding Aids
Amanda Holgate and Jodi Hoover

“Archivists have long sought to increase the visibility
and accessibility of their collections, to make
information about their holdings available to those
physically distant from a repository, and to ensure
that potential researchers are aware of relevant
archival resources.”
~ Kathleen Feeney

Traditional Finding Aids
The term “finding aid” can describe many types
of resources.
Traditional finding aids include:
- Subject cards in a card catalog
- Binder of paper finding aids
- Printed guides that survey whole collections

Traditional Finding Aids
Distributing Information:
- Printed guides of general inventories were helpful
and were distributed to libraries and other repositories.
They were also expensive to produce and not all archives
could afford to make them.
- Researchers spent a lot of time “chasing footnotes”
to find repositories and specific collections of interest.
- In 1962 the Library of Congress printed the first
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
(NUCMC). Huge step forward in providing researchers
with a means to find information and discover new
sources.

“Archivists have moved finding aids from the
bookshelves and filing cabinets to the Internet. The
widespread implementation of MARC-AMC and
EAD has revolutionized the presentation of archival
information, although many archivists have also
moved information online without applying these
standards.”
~ Christopher Prom

Standardizing Finding Aids
 MARC - the first standard for structuring metadata about
books
 MARC-AMC (Archival and Manuscript Control) - 1983
 APPM - created to compensate for AACR2s inapplicability
to archival practice
“The idea of descriptive standards, controlled vocabularies,
and specialized containers to describe archival collections
alarmed, dismayed, and infuriated many archivists who
believed descriptive practice had to be embodied in finding
aids…as unique as archival collections themselves.”
~ Helen Tibbo

Standardizing Finding Aids
These adaptations led the archival community
toward standardizing finding aids and “sent
archivists, some willingly, some kicking and
screaming, down the high tech road to national
access for descriptive tools.”

Online Finding Aids
The rise of the Internet made archivists aware of
further possibilities for intellectual access, and in the
1990s archivists began mounting finding aids
online:
• HTML
• Berkeley Finding Aid Project led by Daniel Pitti:
- SGML - a flexible option
- EAD - becomes the standard
- SAA maintains EAD guidelines and a tag library
on their Web site.

User interactions with Electronic
Finding Aids in a Controlled Setting
Christopher Prom, assist. archivist, University of Illinois
 Conducted: Summer 2003, University of Illinois
Archives
 Purpose: Look at the nature of the participants’
navigational strategies through finding aids
and the efficiency with which they search
alternate designs.
 Hypothesis: Experts and novices employ different
search strategies and reach different search
results.

Participants identified themselves as archival
experts, computer search experts, or novices. Some
were coded as both computer and archival experts.
- 89 individuals completed the study
35- onsite under observation
54- offsite and unobserved
- Results of the study were weighted towards the
on-site participants.

Breakdown of participants:
68%- graduate students, faculty or staff members
20%- members of the public
12%- undergraduate students
No genealogists were included in this study.

 According to Amanda Hill (University of Manchester), 80%
of users who filled out an online “new user” form on the
A2A website were researching family history.
 LEADERS (Linking EAD to Electronically Retrievable
Sources) conducted a survey of 617 on-site users. They
found that-
- 60% of users were leisure users
- 84% of leisure users were researching family history.

 Familiarity with Finding Aids
- 75% of the participants had used online finding aids
prior to this study.
- Expert Archives users indicated a preference for printed
finding aids and were skeptical that online finding aids would
be complete.
- Novice Archives users rarely even knew what a finding aid
was:
“…somebody who’s helping you find something whereas with
a search engine you’re finding it yourself.”
“…something not everybody has. Probably a java applet that
someone put on a website or a paper index of
an archive.”

 The first task was a dry run to show how the system
worked.
 Tasks 2-5 Participants were provided with the title of a
known collection of personal papers and asked to find
the collection identifier.
 Tasks 6-9 Participants were asked to search an
individual finding aid for a folder of material relating to
a topic.

Results:
- The expert archives/computer search experts completed their
tasks faster than the novice users.
- Search boxes tended to confuse and hinder people from
efficient searching.
- Users (mostly expert) completed the task much faster when
a browse feature was available.
“I used the search box because it was so prominent. I would
assume that Taft’s papers would be the first hit, but they were
not. I definitely prefer a browse if I know what I’m looking
for.”

 “Many participants specifically noted in their submitted comments of interviews
that alphabetical lists are easy to use. If a list could not be found on a given page,
some participants would begin to look for one, scrolling to the bottom of the page if
necessary.”
 “Search/query boxes should be strategically integrated into collection level search
systems to satisfy the needs of novice users, but they should not be implemented at
the expense of browsing options. Nor should search boxes use overly complex
and/or non-standard methods of returning results.”
 “Name browsing has been shown to be important to other archival experts, such as
history students. Since these behaviors are prominent and effective among archival
experts, interfaces for archival finding aids should encourage them.”

 The PDF finding aids were searched more slowly by novice and
expert users.
 Archival terminology tended to confuse participants.
“I mean I’m assuming when it says entire finding aid online that every collection is on
here. I mean that’s what I’d assume by looking at that, that all the other finding aids
are online....What am I missing would be my question.”
 Main Conclusion: While no search interface will satisfy everyone,
having a good combination of browse and search functions will
help the success of both novice and expert users of finding aids.

Because this test was conducted in 2003 and the
sites have probably changed since then, I decided to
revisit each site and see if it included the following
three things:
- Both a search box and a browse function
- Definitions of finding aids (or other archival
terms)
- Percentage of finding aids available online

 Five of the seven sites have a search and a browse feature
present, however University of North Carolina only has a
browse feature for some of it’s collections and not on it’s
main search page. University of Houston has a browse
feature that allows you to browse by Collection Title,
Subject, Creator, and Archival Record Group and so uses
archival terms in way that might be confusing.
- Only three of the sites have definitions of Finding
Aids.
- Only three of them clearly state that not all of their
finding aids are available online.

First Entry: Report on a Qualitative Exploratory Study
of Novice User Experience with Online Finding Aids
Wendy Scheir, 1939 World’s Fair Project archivist, NYPL
 Conducted: Remotely, via e-mailed instructions and
surveys
 Purpose: To study the ways in which online finding
aids either inhibit or facilitate use by
novice searchers.
 Hypothesis: Finding aid terminology, navigation,
display and structure influence the success
of novice user searches.

First Entry: Report on a Qualitative Exploratory Study of
Novice User Experience with Online Finding Aids
Problems:
- Direct URL access to the finding aids - no use
of user-initiated searches in order to
investigate how users would navigate an
‘open-ended’ search.
- This idea of ‘novice’ seems quite unusual.
Even if the users are archival novices, their
credentials imply an above average research
ability. One individual was dropped from the
study due to weak computer skills.

 Method:
- Scheir chose computer literate users with no personal
search interests.
- Users were e-mailed a document with six tasks.
- Users were given the URL that provided
entrance to the “top-most level” of the finding aid.
- Users were asked to spend no more than five
minutes for each task; their experiences were
documented and e-mailed to Scheir.

 Study tasks:
1) Identify the collection subject’s birth date.
2) Determine in which box a particular document is
housed.
3) Identify the series that contains a particular
document.
4) Determine the series and sub-series that
contain a particular document.
5) Draw conclusions about content holdings; is this
item within the date limits of the finding aid
description?
6) Identify the physical repository at which a collection
described in an online consortium could be found.

 Findings - Terminology
- Archival terminology is confusing!
- Dates--collection dates, bulk dates, and life-span dates
must be clearly stated. Assume nothing.
- Users are presupposed to understand archival terms.
Assume nothing.
“What does scope and content MEAN???!”
“What is in this collection?”

Findings - Navigation
- It is difficult to distinguish between poor finding
aid design and poor Web site design.
- Long container lists can confuse a person.
- Hyperlinks between hierarchical levels also get
users lost.
- What’s the fix? Column headings, static left-
hand frames, others?

Findings - Display
- Long blocks of text with no line breaks are
difficult and “annoying” to read.
- “Busy” interfaces pose challenges.
Consider the user. Scheir states that, “Seemingly
innocuous display decisions such as back- ground color,
text placement, and font size and type, made important
differences in participants’ experience of these sites.”

Findings - Structure
- The multi-level, contextual environment of
finding aids is NOT self-evident to novice users.
- Hierarchical arrangement is confusing--novice
users do not often understand the relationships
between Arrangement, Series Description, and
Container List levels of finding aids.

Hidden Collections:
What are they?
Materials not entered into an online
catalog (or any catalog)
Un- or under-processed archival
collections
- Particularly a problem in Special and
Manuscript collections.

Hidden Collections:
What are they?
Problems of hidden collections:
- Hidden collections are at a greater risk for
theft.
- Confidentially risks - lack of intellectual
control.
- Difficult for users to find.
- Knowledge of hidden collections is often
reliant on particular staff members.

Hidden Collections:
Improving Access
Surveys
- Internal: archives can assess the extent to which
hidden collections are a problem
- External: archives can notify patrons of un- or
under-cataloged or processed materials
*Hornbake Library has one such report online:
Hornbake Library

Hidden Collections:
Improving Access
ARL (Association of Research Libraries)
Task Force on Special Collections
- Web site makes hidden collection reports, like the
previous Hornbake one, publicly available
- Exposing Hidden Collections Conference
- ARL Web site

Hidden Collections:
Improving Access
In-house Collection Assessment
- Intellectual Access Rating
- Research Value Rating
It all boils down to “More Product, Less
Process.”

Conclusion
ASSUME NOTHING
WHEN THE TIME
COMES TO CREATE
YOUR OWN FINDING
AIDS!!!

Citations
 Feeney, Kathleen. “Retrieval of Archival Finding Aids Using World-
Wide-Web Search Engines.” American Archivist 62 (Fall 1999): 206-
228.
 Hill, Amanda. “Serving the Invisible Researcher: Meeting the Needs of
Online Users.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 25.2 (2004): 139-148.
 Prom, Christopher J. “User Interactions with Electronic Finding Aids in a
Controlled Setting.” American Archivist 67 (Fall/Winter 2004): 234-268.
 Scheir, Wendy. “First Entry: Report on a Qualitative Exploratory Study
of Novice User Experience with Online Finding Aids.” Journal of
Archival Organization 3.4 (2005): 49-80.
 Tibbo, Helen and Lokman I. Meho. “Finding Finding Aids on the World
Wide Web.” American Archivist 64 (Spring/Summer 2001): 61-77.
 Yakel, Elizabeth. “Hidden Collections in Archives and Libraries.” OCLC
Systems and Services 21.2 (2005): 95-99.

User Responses to Finding Aids

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