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Let me tell you about my grandpa:

Explore findings on user annotations in online archival collections, implications for archivists, & strategies for encouraging user engagement. Dive into user-contributed comments, implications for authority control, & user-community encouragement.

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Let me tell you about my grandpa:

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  1. Let me tell you about my grandpa: • jessica sedgwick A content analysis of user annotations to online archival collections archivist for women in medicine harvard medical school 13 august 2009 Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth State University

  2. Archivists are very busy! • …and other limits on archival description

  3. Meanwhile… • Archivists are experimenting with “2.0” approaches

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. Online collections examined • Keweenaw Digital Archives • Beyond Brown Paper • Polar Bear Expedition • Digital Collections

  7. Data set • Total comments collected: 568 • Breakdown for each site:

  8. Codebook

  9. Results overall

  10. #1 Subject identification Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth State University

  11. #2 Providing further information Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives

  12. #3 Linking to further resources Image courtesy Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

  13. #4 Establishing personal connection Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth State University

  14. #6 Correction Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives

  15. Results compared across sites

  16. 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

  17. Encouraging your user community Image and screenshot from Joyner Library Digital Collections, Eastern Carolina University

  18. Authority control Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives

  19. Searching across comments Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

  20. Incorporating user-contributed content Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth State University

  21. Incorporating user-contributed content Image courtesy Michigan Tech Archives

  22. 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?

  23. Thank you! email: jmsedg@gmail.com twitter: jm_sedgwick • Complete study available online: • http://etd.ils.unc.edu/dspace/handle/1901/561 Image from Beyond Brown Paper, courtesy Plymouth State University Special thanks to The Donald Peterson Student Award Committee

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