Transforming the Crazy Quilt: Archival Displays from a User's Point of View

This paper reports on the results of a focus group study to obtain users' opinions on the content and format of displays in archival information systems. The study addressed two questions: what information about archival materials would users like to see displayed in online public access catalogues or on the web and how would they like the material displayed? Participants evaluated an Encoded Archival Description display, displays taken from four existing archival information systems, and a sixth specially created display based on guidelines on bibliographic displays. The present study produced a number of findings, for example that users had problems interpreting information regarding physical description and dates of creation and that many were confused by use of the word "fonds." The paper concludes with suggestions for designing more usable displays. T h e purpose of archival description is multifaceted. Description plays an important role in archival control, supporting functions such as accessioning, processing, and record scheduling. Description is also critical to providing users with access to holdings2 Frederic Miller notes that "archival description is fundamentally a process, of communicating information about sets of record t o their potential ~ s e r s . " ~ Description provides researchers with valuable contextual information that users need to understand and use records, often Archival Displays from a Users' Point of View 45 throughout the various stages in their research. During the last decade, Canadian archivists have concentrated much effort in developing the Canadian Rules for Archival Description (RAD) to standardize their descriptive practices and enable users to access information as efficiently and independently as possible. RAD has been widely implemented by Canadian archivists, but to date, no systematic study has been undertaken to discover whether RAD-compliant descriptions help users locate what they need. Some archivists have contended that the rules have improved access to archival material4 while others have suggested that the rules require radical modification to meet the needs of particular users.5 However, these opinions and their underlying assumptions are based on impressionistic observations and have not been empirically tested. There are limitations to RAD. RAD is a data content standard which controls the content of the elements of description. It is an input standard, not an output standard. RAD suggests the elements required in a minimum level of description and implies an order for those elements, but does not provide guidelines for the formatting or structuring of the descriptions. The order is based on the order of elements recommended by AACR2, and is most relevant to paper-based finding aids that do not use labels. (Labels are terms or phrases that introduce and identify an element.) In a system that does not use labels, a standard order of elements and punctuation helps users locate and identify elements: for example, the dates always come after the title and are preceded by a dash. Labels serve the same purpose of locating and identifying elements, and therefore reduce the need for a prescribed order. The General International Standard for Archival Description (ISAD[G])~ does not proscribe an order or the elements that a description should contain. This reflects a recognition that input standards such as ISAD[G] should not control the presence or order of elements in an output product.7 Research to establish the minimum number of elements and their preferred order is greatly needed. The following article reports on the findings of a study that used focus groups to obtain users' opinions of six different displays of RAD-compliant fonds level descriptive displays. Literature Review: Evaluations of Archival Description In 1989 the Society of American Archivists Working Group on Standards for Archival Description called for studies of users' opinions on descriptive practices.* However, only two research studies have investigated the ability of users to understand and use archival descriptions. In 1992 Young & Wiltshire Management Consultants conducted a study of the patrons of the National Archives of Canada to evaluate the Archives' descriptive system and users' satisfaction with it. As part of this study, Young & Wiltshire collected data from 400 telephone interviews, from in-depth interviews with ten patrons, and from interviews with reference staff. The telephone interviews revealed that