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Singular, personal and one-off access

Singular, personal and one-off access. The National Reference Service Tonia Vincent Acting Director, Reference & Information Services. The National Reference Service. Reading rooms in each state and territory office Approximately 20,000 a year visit a reading room – 50,000 records viewed

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Singular, personal and one-off access

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  1. Singular, personal and one-off access The National Reference Service Tonia Vincent Acting Director, Reference & Information Services

  2. The National Reference Service • Reading rooms in each state and territory office • Approximately 20,000 a year visit a reading room – 50,000 records viewed • Remote reference inquiries – between 35,000 and 40,000 a year • Standard of service – response within 30 days

  3. Individualised service • Reference officers aim to match individual with records required • Obligation under the Archives Act to assist with identifying items • Often just a single visit to a reading room or a single inquiry • Majority are interested in records that have personal meaning to them

  4. Who are our researchers?

  5. How do they come to us?

  6. Reference • Reference officers aim to provide the information required, in the time a user needs it • Not all items are listed on RecordSearch • Archival control systems are complex to navigate • Archives are not familiar to the majority of users

  7. Reference in the digital age • Archives are rethinking the way they operate in a digital environment • Majority of our users access us online - remote use of collection - 2.3 million records were accessed online last FY • WWI digitisation project resulted in decrease of 25,000 enquiries • Ancestry.com project to digitise incoming passenger lists (K269) • There will be a deluge of born-digital records

  8. Where to from here? • Enhance item level description • Improve our search capability - huge increase in number of records available online - potential for content searching • Survey our user population - who are they? - what do they want from us? - why/how do they come to us? - how do they use the information?

  9. Where to from here? • Enter into dialogue with our users • Investigate how our archival control systems can be translated into something that is meaningful for our users • Investigate personalised self-service options • Technology to deliver digital information in a format that is needed by the users, when they want to access it

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