Archives Questionnaires

When thinking about how I would gather information for my study on digitization in archives, I've determined a questionnaire would be useful for gaining an understanding of the thinking that archivists have about digitization as well as the people who use digital archives. I think the survey should include a combination of multiple choice, yes/know questions and more qualitative narrative questions, because my participants will generally be educated and at least somewhat knowledgeable about archives. I will probably design two separate questionnaires, one that is geared toward archivists and uses more archival terminology, and another that is geared toward researchers and other digital archives users, using terminology that is more general and basic. My focus is on what the archivist and digital archives users gain from digital material versus the physical. For the user questionnaire, it might be helpful to ask if the respondent has researched actual materials in an archive previously, because that would give some validity to the comparison of researching actual versus digital. Also, for the archivist questionnaire, I might want to ask what percentage of their time is devoted to digitization versus physical archiving and also the time difference between accessing material physically versus digitally. I will probably need to pre-test the questionnaires to make sure they make sense, hopefully I'll find some willing guinea pigs!

Evaluation and Research

Now that I have my research question a little better defined, I have been thinking about How I would gather information to investigate this question. Since evaluation research has been discussed in class and the readings, I have been trying to figure out my approach to designing my study. I envision the study to survey around 5 - 7 archives, investigating their digital collections and comparing that to their entire physical collection. Some of that information can be initially obtained through web resources, but then I will need to contact relevant staff to gain further information that is not available online. I am not as interested in action research, which involves making recommendations for changes. This a study would be more involved with gathering evidence to support a conclusion to my research question. I think some of the literature I surveyed will be useful in building a foundation for my study, giving me prior information to refer to for when I look at investigating my question.