Users, archivists and their interaction

Almost 20 years ago the famous Canadian archivist Barbara Craig gave the title ‘Old Myths in New Clothes: expectations of archives users’ to her contribution to a conference on archives’ public (Craig, 1998). She provided evidence that there is a risk that archives are ‘condemned by their own methods to fall short in meeting the needs of their users’; she also argued that this is not a new issue, but ‘an updated version of the familiar scenario in which it is assumed that conflicting demands and distinctions exist between select services for an elite clientele and popular appeal and services for the many’. The popular myth that the world wide web contains every possible information enforces the misconceptions about the nature of users and their access behaviours, so ‘it is crucial that the energy behind our concern not dissipate in complaining’, but archivists should accept that ‘the many varieties of myth surrounding information technology contain a core of reality for users and for archives’.

Users follow different strategies

The development of digital environments for offering access to archival information requires considering different scenarios of use. The popular typology of internet users includes two categories – browsers (or surfers) and searchers, where the browser typically follows multiple links mostly for amusement, and the searcher is seeking specific information. Actually back in 1977 when discussing the wider case of information retrieval, Carl Beck introduced three categories, browsers, searchers and reductionists (Beck, 1977).

Carl Beck summarised their strategies and we are providing his description here because it is insightful about not only users’ interactions with digital material, but also the long way digital collections have developed over 40 years.