Swimming the Channels: An Analysis of Online Archival Reference Enquiries - Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015 Access content directly
Conference Papers Year : 2015

Swimming the Channels: An Analysis of Online Archival Reference Enquiries

Joseph Pugh
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1019910
Christopher Power
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1004990

Abstract

Archives of historical and cultural data, such as the UK’s National Archives, receive huge volumes of enquiries from users. These have been seldom systematically studied, despite the obvious benefits to the organisations concerned and interaction designers. The literature looking at the spectrum of remote communications carried out by a modern archive is sparse. Similarly, there is a lack of information about the problems users are having with archival information systems, and no information on the distribution of problems or where in users’ information seeking journeys they occur. This paper reports on a mixed-method study using content analysis and grounded theory to address these gaps in the literature. The results of the study indicate that users primarily are encountering problems knowing where to start looking or where to look next in their information seeking journeys. Further, these problems seem to create a deep anxiety or uncertainty in archive users which drives them to seek reassurance and guidance from human archivists, who will provide the type of disambiguation and support that current information systems do not. The paper closes with implications of this work on the future prioritisation of design practice and research in online archives.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
346946_1_En_8_Chapter.pdf (324.91 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
Loading...

Dates and versions

hal-01609418 , version 1 (03-10-2017)

Licence

Attribution

Identifiers

Cite

Joseph Pugh, Christopher Power. Swimming the Channels: An Analysis of Online Archival Reference Enquiries. 15th Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT), Sep 2015, Bamberg, Germany. pp.99-115, ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-22698-9_8⟩. ⟨hal-01609418⟩
87 View
107 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More