Let me tell you about my grandpa:

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Let me tell you about my grandpa
A content analysis of user annotations to online
archival collections

• jessica sedgwick

archivist for women in medicine harvard medical
school 13 august 2009
Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth
State University
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Archivists are very busy!
and other limits on archival description
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Meanwhile

• Archivists are experimenting with 2.0 approaches

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Concerns about user-engagement

• What is the value?
• Cost of implementation and maintenance
• Loosening our grip on authority control

Image from Library of Congress, 1930s-40s in
Color set on Flickr
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Study design

• Content analysis
• Collected publicly-contributed user comments from
  online archival collections
• Analyzed comments against a set of categories
• Counted each comment toward as many categories as
  it represented

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Online collections examined

• Keweenaw Digital Archives
• Beyond Brown Paper
• Polar Bear Expedition
• Digital Collections

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Data set

• Total comments collected 568
• Breakdown for each site

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Codebook
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Results overall
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1 Subject identification
Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth
State University
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2 Providing further information
Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives
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3 Linking to further resources
Image courtesy Bentley Historical Library,
University of Michigan
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4 Establishing personal connection
Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth
State University
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6 Correction
Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives
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Results compared across sites
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Implications

• Users are willing to contribute, how willing are
  archivists to let them?
• Considerations
• Encouraging and managing comments
• Maintaining clear spaces of authority
• Making user comments searchable
• Incorporating user comments into archival
  description

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Encouraging your user community
Image and screenshot from Joyner Library Digital
Collections, Eastern Carolina University
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Authority control
Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives
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Searching across comments
Bentley Historical Library, University of
Michigan
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Incorporating user-contributed content
Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth
State University
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Incorporating user-contributed content
Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives
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Final thoughts and questions

• How is user engagement affected by
• format of materials (textual vs. photographic)
• amount of metadata provided
• Implications for finding aids?
• How to verify accuracy (and why bother?)
• How to encourage and shape user engagement?

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Thank you!
email jmsedg_at_gmail.com twitter jm_sedgwick
Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth
State University

• Complete study available online
• http//etd.ils.unc.edu/dspace/handle/1901/561

Special thanks to The Donald Peterson Student
Award Committee