Research Forum Presentation: Developing the Archival Metrics Toolkits: Conceptual Development and Testing

Authors:
Elizabeth Yakel, Associate Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan

Helen Tibbo, Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina

Wendy Duff, Associate Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Morgan Daniels, Doctoral Student, School of Information, University of Michigan

Magia Krause, Doctoral Student, School of Information, University of Michigan

SAA Presentation
SAA 2008 Presentation

Abstract
The Archival Metrics Project has created five user-based evaluation instruments for use by college and university archives and special collections. These are aimed at: (1) onsite users of the reading room, (2) students who have attended an orientation session, (3) instructors who use the archives for teaching, (4) online users of the website, and (5) online users of finding aids. This presentation will discuss the development of the questionnaires and discuss how the different elements fed into each other to support decisions about what to evaluate and how to formulate the questions. It will draw on findings from interviews with archivists, instructors, and undergraduate students and literature reviews. Then, we will demonstrate how these findings fed into the conceptual framework and are currently represented in the questionnaires. Finally, we will discuss our alpha and beta testing processes when we attempted to ensure that we were actually testing these concepts.