Investigators

Elizabeth Yakel is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her research focuses on access and accessibility to primary sources. This includes investigations into the patterns of use, the nature of analog and digital representations of archival materials, information seeking patterns and the human information interaction with these representations, and the design of archival access systems. This project, " Developing Archival Use and User Metrics," funded by the Mellon Foundation, is a major component of this research agenda. It complements other studies focusing on users, such as "Assessing Access and Accessibility of Interfaces for Primary Sources," funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and builds on her previous investigations of user expertise in archives (see "Archival Intelligence" in the American Archivist) and administrative users of archives.

Wendy Duff is an associate professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. While doing her doctoral work she was the project co-ordinator for the University of Pittsburgh Electronic Recordkeeping Project. Her primary research interests are user studies, archival description, and electronic records. She has served as a member of the ICA Adhoc Commission on Descriptive Standards, the Encoded Archival Description Working Group, and the EU(DELOS)/NSF Workgroup on Digital Archiving and Preservation. Her current research interests focus on the development of generic user evaluation tools and the information seeking behaviour of archival users.

Helen R. Tibbo is an Professor in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from Maryland as well as an MA in American Studies. She teaches in the areas of archival and records management; digital preservation, access, and curation; and electronic information retrieval. Her primary research interests focus on optimizing information seeking and retrieval in humanistic and archival research, information management literacy, and digital curation. She has a particular interest in understanding how individuals seek information within archival settings and how we all manage the digital files that may one day become archival material. She is currently working on several projects related to electronic records and the use of primary resources, including the Delmas Foundation supported Primarily History project, a collaboration with Dr. Ian Anderson from the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow, to understand how historians seek primary resource material in the digital age; Managing the Digital University Desktop (http://ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop), a study with Tim Pyatt, Duke University Archivist, of creator-centered electronic records management at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill; the NHPRC Electronic Records Research Fellowship Project (http://ils.unc.edu/nhprcfellows) that is funding small-scale electronic records projects; and Archival Metrics, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is also embarking on the Minds of Carolina project to assist University faculty with digital self-archiving in D-Space type environments and the development of a center for digital curation at Chapel Hill.