Digital Collections Decision Tree

Final Report from DCPT: https://drive.google.com/file/d/161xciXoUc6PeTVimVrF_GUEyfKw_JdhK/view

Background

The Digital Collections Project Team is seeking Discovery's feedback on a project they inherited from phase 4.

The "Digital Collections Decision Tree" is a tool to help campuses decide if they want to share their digital collections (typically archival, if I understood right) in UC Library Search and, if so, how to best represent those collections.

They would like us to think about how to frame informative documentation to make the decision tree "mean something” and articulate why a campus might make a specific decision (or why not) so that campuses can decide the best way to represent their individual collections to researchers.

Digital Collections Project Team Overview: Digital Collections Project Team
Decision Tree: https://drive.google.com/file/d/105NFzVUSLhho3FW_fiNEV30iXNj95Cej/view?usp=sharing
Decision Tree Companion Document:
Decision Tree documents:

Sandbox Testing Collections:

Recommendation

The companion document, decision tree, and questionnaire all appear fine to us, but also don’t appear to affect the discovery user experience.

The DCPT asked us to articulate why, or why not, a campus might want to share item level records or to share collection level records, and if there are other options in Primo that could improve collection visibility.

After looking at the collections currently in testing in the Sandbox, Discovery came to some of the same conclusions as the DCPT, such as Collection Level records retaining context and having more robust metadata than Item Level records.

However, Discovery believes that individual campuses must consider the question of how to share their individual collections by first considering the needs and habits of their users.

Why might a campus want to share a collection level record?

Some collections may be self-explanatory about their contents. A collection titled “Anne McCaffrey papers” is relatively self-explanatory. Researchers doing research on Anne McCaffrey may only need a collection level record and item level records with titles like “Email with George Scithers” might be confusing.

Why might a campus share item level records?

A user researching the Carquinez Bridge is better served by an item level record titled “Carquinez Bridge Construction” than a collection level record titled “Greene (Henry Dart) Papers.”

Discovery’s bigger concern is what to do about labels and such once the records are in Primo.

1. Regardless of Collection or Item Level, there must be a link to the collection in the “Get It” section of the full record. (Getting it there might be the domain of Fulfillment or Resource Management).

2. The label for link that appears in the “Get It” section must communicate where that link is going. Users don’t necessarily understand what a collection or a finding aid is. Discovery would recommend phrasing for this label in order to harmonize the user experience across campuses.

3. Because these recommendations are based upon limited information, Discovery recommends multi-campus user testing once campuses start using this process and there are examples from more branches of the decision tree. We need to see how users looking for primary sources interact with these collections in Primo and then we can reevaluate.

Are there are other options in Primo that could improve collection visibility?

Maybe. We are unsure if these options have been explored and therefore Discovery cannot say if these options would be better for representing digital collections to our users or not.

Alma: Digital Representations

Resources > Add Digital Representation

Primo: Collection Discovery

 Resources > Manage Collections