Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Student Researchers To Assess The Digital Collections User Experience, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Lindsey Memory, Jonathan Jarvis, Greg Seppi, Madeleine Meldrum, Hannah Bozue

Faculty Publications

Following the closure of the Harold B. Lee Library’s special collections during the pandemic, the presenters designed a study to assess the usability of our CONTENTdm system. The library collaborated with a sociology professor to have students from his qualitative research methods class administer the study, observing other undergraduates using the system to perform tasks, and interviewing them about their experiences. In this presentation, the librarians, the sociology professor, and two students will share lessons learned from this experience, including small disappointments and unexpected benefits. We’ll also share the study methodology and suggestions for optimizing this type of professional collaboration …

Assessing Our Digital Asset Management System (Contentdm) From The Undergraduate Patron Perspective, Lindsey Memory, Abby Beazer, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Brent Ellingson

Faculty Publications

COVID underscored the desire of the student population to access library and special collections materials online. After two decades of hosting BYU’s digitized content in the digital asset management system CONTENTdm, we decided in summer 2021 to evaluate its interface for ease of use and reliability. We wanted to determine how our system was performing for an undergraduate population specifically, and to understand the typical undergraduate students’ experience searching for and accessing digitized materials. Our study involved the use of Gen-Z student researchers, who observed undergraduate patrons via a Zoom screenshare. These patrons performed a variety of user tasks and …

Keynote Address: Curating The History Of Covid-19, Jeremy Myntti

Faculty Publications

Many libraries and archives have a mission to document local or regional history and current events. Rapid response collecting during a crisis has become increasingly necessary in recent years in order to curate content during an event rather than after the event has concluded. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, libraries across the world recognized the importance of documenting contemporary history for the current and future study of the pandemic. Many projects were created to document different aspects of the pandemic, each with a slightly different focus based on types of content, populations, or regions. This talk will …

The Utah Covid-19 Digital Collection: Best Practices For Born-Digital, Crowdsourced Collections, Jeremy Myntti, Anna Neatrour, Rachel Wittmann

Faculty Publications

“Traditionally archivists collected material years following an event. This is no longer the case. Digital content and documenting current events both require information specialists to act quickly and be involved in the initial development of potential collections to ensure they are identified, described, and preserved for future retrieval.”

Metadata Managed: How To Clean Data That Is Up To No Good., Jeremy Myntti, Anna Neatrour

Faculty Publications

Metadata Problems

• Size of collections –Close to 300 collections, over 2 million items.
• Age of collections – started digitizing in 2000
• Inconsistent training
• Variety of collections means different conventions used for collections from:
• Internal
• external
• Campus Partners

Building Digital Collections Through Partnerships: Byu's Harold B. Lee Library And Internet Archive, Elizabeth Smart

Faculty Publications

Since June 2009, BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library (HBLL) has worked in partnership with the Internet Archive (IA) to scan library holdings for public access in the Internet Archive’s digital library (www.archive.org). While many libraries send microfilm, monographs and serials to IA Scanning Centers for digital imaging on Scribe scanning stations, HBLL is one of very few academic libraries working with the Internet Archive in a “no-cash model” partnership. This partnership is based on an exchange of goods and services.

The Internet Archive provides: Scribe scanning stations (one in June 2009; two additional in January 2011), relevant software, post-scan processing. …