SUGGESTED PRESENTATION OF ONLINE ARCHIVAL FINDING AIDS

Group project for "Access Systems for Archival Materials,"
University of Michigan School of Information, Fall 2000.

  • Purpose:
    To suggest an alternative presentation of online finding aids.

  • Problem:
    Until recently, archival finding aids were usually only used by archivists and researchers, most of whom were familiar with the typical organization and scope of a finding aid and the procedures for conducting archival research. Now that more and more finding aids are going online, they are being found by a new audience who is unfamiliar with both finding aids and archives in general. This new audience finds itself confused and frustrated. Archives find themselves having to spend time and money to provide basic orientation.

    Original finding aid: (at the Bentley Library website)
    - Outline view
    - Full-text view.

  • Proposed Solution:
    Our solution attempts to solve three parts of this problem:
    - making the finding aids easier to navigate for new users.
    - helping new users understand how archives function.
    - making the conversion as inexpensive in man-hours as possible.

    Our version of the finding aid

     

    Back to Elizabeth Vera's Resume
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