Are You Being Served?Are You Being Served?How knowing digital users can help you improve access to your alderman and notary archives and loads of other stuff

Südwestdeutscher Archivtag | Konstanz, Germany | May 24, 2014

Meet ChristianMeet Christian

Works at BHIC, Netherlands Coördinates reference

services & digital innovation

Founder of Archief 2.0 Blogger/speaker/writer

www.digitalearchivaris.nl

@cvanderven

A great idea!A great idea!

“Let’s scan our alderman* archives and let volunteers make them accessible in the best way possible”

*) Stadträte until 1811

Best index

ever!

ResultsResults

Best index ever?

No, in about 10 years of hard work a group of volunteers completed about 1% of the index…

…and the project was halted

The following 12 slides contain screenshots that even archivists may find too old, outdated & boring(Also all of them are in Dutch)

IndexesInformation desk

Knowledge base Education

Depository

Meet WillieMeet Willie

Regular visitor at BHIC

Sweet person who likes to help other researchers

Made local notary archives accessible

Over 33.000transcriptions

Basic source information and a summary of the deed put into plain text

Summary

Source info

Search

Well deserved! How

lovely!

The old daysThe old days

Meeting users in our study halls Knowing users over many years of visits

Basis for providing services Basis for successful collaboration

And then the Internet cameand it changed everything…

Meet digital usersMeet digital users

IP addresses Visits and pageviews Click paths, session duration,

exit pages, browser type etc.

Difficult collaborating with users who are difficult to meet and difficult to know

(Difficult giving them flowers!)

Visits to study hall and website BHIC in 2001 and 2010

So…So…

How to meet these users?

How to get to know these users?

In order of successful collaborating with them

About me, and my motivation to participate

Meet TheoMeet Theo

"I only participate in the Amsterdam population registry project, and yes, as someone from Amsterdam you hope to meet some of your ancestors this way"

Meet MaartenMeet Maarten

"Each time when I have finished a scan and push the ‘send’ button,I experience a moment of happiness"

Meet DitekeMeet Diteke

"Reading the old handwritings offers challenging puzzles which improve my paleography skills"

Could she check on other people’s transcripts?

Contact her!

Meet another TheoMeet another Theo

"Personally I enjoy the many discussions on the forum, because you might be doing the data entry on your own, but you're not alone"

Meet DorethéMeet Dorethé

"I find it to be a bit of a sport to try and find info on the internet or, when it concerns digital archives, from databases"

Meet DorethéMeet Dorethé

Got to know her via forum Posted 1.147 messages

Many people even believe she’s staff of the BHIC

She got flowers for helping us doing ‘our’ reference work

Meet PaulineMeet Pauline

Enthusiastic historian Lives in Nuenen, Brabant Has an interest in

archeology, monuments, Vincent van Gogh, recreation, tourism, village marketing and poetry

Quick win for

interaction

on Twitter!

“Welcome, and obviously we are very proud of this

letter by Vincent van Gogh”

“Very special! And inspiring. Also nice to be followed back. This

is the home of Van Gogh’s father”

Profiles for us(e)Profiles for us(e)

Our digital users provide us with an amazing amount of quality information about themselves, their interests, motivation etc.

But how do you use this information?

And do you?

Meet BenMeet Ben

Independent software developer

Blogs about crowdsourced transcription projects

Developed FromThePageA free collaborative transcription platform

Meet Ben’s volunteerMeet Ben’s volunteer

“You're going to laugh, but… I have been transcribing just a few pages at a time lately because I didn't want to finish before the next diary is posted! I didn't want to run out of diary, in other words.”

Statistics for us(e)Statistics for us(e)

Statistics Websites, applications, social media etc.

Who are they? What do they search for? What collections do they use? What way do they participate? Etc.

Meet MarissaMeet Marissa

CEO at Yahoo! Previously vice president

of user experice at Google Oversaw layout of

Google’s search page

“Focus on the user”

The one blue is more greenish than the other

blue (really!)

A/B testing pointed out that in fact the blue-blue

was more clicked on than the green-blue

(really!)

Let data decideLet data decide

What you can’t learn from the info of one user, but can learn from the statistics of a crowd

“Let the data decide”--Marissa Mayer

Most popular

items are about new

resources… and women!

Nice

effe

ct

Start of putting stuff inthe news letter that hadproven to be clicked on

Better effect

Second chance?Second chance?

So let’s try this at home…

(Well, at the archives that is,with our alderman archives project)

Second chance?Second chance?

What do users need, what do they tell us?

What do data tell us users really use?

Where can we meet these users?

Can we collaborate with them?

Users search for names of people and

places

Users make deeds accessible by making short summaries of

them, including names of people and places

Users willing to scan and index archives meet each other on

our forum, where we can

also meet them

We may import these indexes in our system, linked to our inventories and scans, if scans are already available

We even link to photographed resources on other websites, not worrying too much about quality and such

ResultsResults

Users helped us to make 225.000 deeds accessible through our website within 2 years

User community provides us with a steady stream of fresh records

This database quickly became our most popular one for non specific genealogical research

What’s next?What’s next?

Acquire photos of the archives from users and import them into the database

Let software extract names of people and places from the summary text into separate fields

Make archives accessible on a basic level, and let indexes be enriched through crowdsourcing

Call for actionCall for action

Meet your digital users & know them better

Use various channels & sources of information

Improve your services in collaboration with users

(And less is often more!)

Thank you!Thank you!

Any questions?

Thank you for staying with me!

Please meet me after my talk, and online