Assignments
1. User Study: Due September 30th
The first section of the class explores the users of cultural heritage repositories. For this assignment, you will design a user study. The focus is up to you. Examples from last year include: who is using the databases on the website of the Louisiana Natorial Archive? What does the undergraduate population at XXX University know about the university special collections? What do users know regarding copyright and use of audio recordings, film footage or photographs? Where are users of the Long Women's Movement Archive website coming from and which collections are they using most? How do members of the xxx military archive perceive the Digital Archives?
To complete this assignment, you will:
- Working in pairs or on your own, visit a repository to gather information.
- Determine the issue that your study will address and clearly state the question(s) your study will answer,what user population you are proposing to study and what information you need to collect from them to answer your questions.
- Determine how the study will be conducted (your methods) e.g., surveys/focus groups/ interviews, etc.
- Design the study to answer your questions. (You might want to conduct it someday…it might be a master’s paper idea)
You may find www.archivalmetrics.org helpful for this assignment.
To submit:
- Information about the institution or repository and the issue(s) to be evaluated. In other words, what do you want to know and why?
- A description of the user population you are targeting
- Clear questions that you would like answered/evaluated through the study design
- Information about the method you will use in the study
- The tool that you will use deploy this study (i.e., the survey questions, a focus group interview guide, etc.)
- An explanation of how this study addresses the issue stated during your interview/exchange with the institution/repository.
- If you are working in a team, you will also submit a short (up to one page) evaluation of your partner's contributions to the project.
Be prepared to discuss your ideas on September 10th in class.
Paper is due September 30th. Format: 12 point, double spaced. Length: 8- 10 pages of text. Pictures, graphs, etc. are welcome in addition to text.
If you are working in a team, you will also submit a short (up to one page) evaluation of your partner's contributions to the project.
Please upload papers here: https://sakai.unc.edu/x/gXkS9d
