TALK: Communicating Resources to Researchers

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Susan Jenkins

Many institutions have a backlog of “items” in their holdings that are not currently discoverable/accessible in their online finding aid(s). Most institutions are actively working on rectifying this, as funding, staffing, etc., allow.

Currently if researchers want to know if more items relating to something they are interested in (e.g., person, place, time period) can now be found via an institution’s finding aid, the researcher has to decide how often to got back to the institution’s finding aid and re-submit their search criteria.

What if, instead, the researcher could submit the search string once and include in that search the request that he/she is automatically advised if anything new results from that search string are returned.  A bit like TradeMe searches. Or perhaps the Digital NZ search builder (digitalnz.org.nz/about/custom-search-builder).

What functionality would researches like? Are there existing add-ons that institutions could use? Or are there apps (I’m thinking ‘bots) that researchers could use to achieve this?

Categories: Research Methods, Session: Talk |

About Susan Jenkins

I'm a relatively new archivist (1 year) with no formal archival or humanities sector education/training, and I'm still getting my head around the complexities of describing public records in our holdings to both maintain trust in the veracity of these records and also to ensure they are easily accessible within the constraints of our online finding aid. After a couple of decades working in administration, I gained an Information Technology degree as a mature student. I then worked as a business analyst in both a global business and a couple of NZ government organisations for a few years before changing career direction yet again. Before registering I did not know who Nicholas Carr or Slavoj Žižek were, and I thank Donelle for bringing them to my attention.

1 Response to TALK: Communicating Resources to Researchers

  1. Pingback: Communicating Resources to Researchers – Options suggested during session | THATCamp Wellington 2013

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