The Quantum Archivist

This truism is something we hear about all the time. Recently, I came across an actual example.

We were meeting with the University’s Office of Communications staff, showing them our new “quantum-based” discovery tool for archival content, including thousands of current and historical images of the campus produced by the Office of Communications.  We took great pains in developing this tool to be responsible archivists and present ALL relevant content, including information about content that was not yet digitized.

At the end of the presentation, they had very positive responses to the discovery tool, but wanted to know why in the world we would show them things they couldn’t see or use immediately over the web. For them, working on deadlines and needing instant access to content, the idea of even being bothered to sift through references to analog content was a waste of time.

And they are right, of course. Most, but not all researchers want

FACTS display with "show non-digital" option

what they want, and they want it now. So we changed our interface a bit. Now when you do a search, you are presented first ONLY with content that is available in digital form. And if you want, you can click a box to include non-digital content. We don’t yet have a way to see how many times that box is clicked. I’m sure it would be interesting.