AI: Archival intelligence and user expertise

American Archivist

Volumn 66, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 51-78

  Yakel, Elizabeth ^a   Torres, Deborah A ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 57849157087     PISSN: 03609081     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17723/aarc.66.1.q022h85pn51n5800     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 619. Novick is quoting Lawrence Stone in the David Abraham case. The entire quotation reads, "When you work in the archives you're far from home, you're bored, you're in a hurry, you're scribbling like crazy. You're bound to make mistakes. I don't believe any scholar in the Western World has impeccable foot. Archival research is a special case of the general messiness of life."
2. For example, see: Gary Marchionini, Sandra Dwiggins, Andrew Katz, and Xia Lin, "Information Seeking in Full-Text End-User-oriented Search Systems: The Roles of Domain and Search Expertise," Library and Information Science Research 15 (Winter 1993): 35-69;
3. and Maaike D. Kiestra, Mia J. W. Stokmans, and Jan Kamphuis, "End-users searching the online catalogue: the influence of domain and system knowledge on search patterns," The Electronic Library 12 (December 1994): 335-43.
4. Randy Bass, "The Garden in the Machine: The Impact of American Studies on New Technologies," available at (4 December 2002).
5. On-line tutorials can be found at such universities as Yale University, Using Manuscripts and Archives: A Tutorial, (4 December 2003); http://www.library.yale.edu/mssa/tutorial/
6. Berkeley, Auburn University: Special Collections & Archives-Archival Tutorial, (4 December 2003); http://www.lib.auburn.edu/archive/user/
7. Rice University, Using Archives: A Guide for Researchers, (4 December 2003). http://www.rice.edu/Fondren/Woodson/usingarchives.html
8. Robert Glaser and Michelene T. H. Chi, "Overview," in The Nature of Expertise, ed. Michelene T. H. Chi, Robert Glaser, and Marshall J. Farr (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988), xvii-xx.
9. Charles Cole, "Name Collection by Ph.D. History Students: Inducing Expertise," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51 (2000): 444-55.
10. James F. Voss and Timothy A. Post, "On the Solving of Ill-Structured Problems," in The Nature of Expertise, ed. Michelene T. H. Chi, Robert Glaser, and Marshall J. Farr (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988), 274.
11. Alan Lesgold, Robert Glaser, Harriet Rubinson, Dale Klopfer, Paul Feltovich, and Yen Wang, "Expertise in a complex skill: Diagnosing x-ray pictures," in The Nature of Expertise, ed. Micheline T. H. Chi, Robert Glaser, and Marshall J. Farr (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), 311-42.
12. Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 75.
13. Patricia Benner, From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall Health, 2001), 33.
14. Benner is quoting Hubert L. Dreyfus and Stuart E. Dreyfus. For a fuller explication of their model of expertise, see Hubert L. Dreyfus and Stuart E. Dreyfus with Tom Anthanasiou, Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (New York: Free Press, 2000).
15. The most recent review is Anna Marie Johnson, "Library instruction and information literacy-2000," Reference Services Review 29, no. 4 (2001): 338-61.
16. See Steven J. Herro, "Bibliographic Instruction and Critical Thinking," Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 43, no. 6 (2000): 554-8.
17. For example, see Sue Samson, "What and When Do They Know? Web-based Assessment," Reference Services Review 28, no. 4 (2000): 335-42;
18. and Lucy Holman, "A Comparison of Computer-assisted Instruction and Classroom Bibliographic Instruction," Reference and User Services Quarterly 40, no. 1 (2000): 53-60.
19. See James M. Marcum, "Rethinking Information Literacy," Library Quarterly 72 (January 2002): 1-26.
20. Elizabeth Yakel, "Listening to Users," Archival Issues 26, no. 2 (2002): 111-27.
21. David Bearman, "User Presentation Language in Archives," Archives and Museum Informatics 3 (Winter 1989/90): 6.
22. Wendy M. Duff and Catherine A. Johnson, "Accidentally Found on Purpose: Information Seeking Behavior of Historians in Archives," Library Quarterly 72 (October 2002): 472-96;
23. and "Archival Research: Process and Perceptions" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Birmingham Ala. August (2002).
24. Mary Jo Pugh, "The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist," American Archivist 45 (Winter 1982): 38.
25. Ann D. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage (Washington, D.C.: National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1992), 55-61.
26. Paul Conway, Partners in Research: Improving Access to the Nation's Archive (Pittsburgh: Archives & Museum Informatics, 1994), 95.
27. Avra Michelson, "Description and Reference in the Age of Automation," American Archivist 50 (Spring 1987): 192-208;
28. Kathleen Feeney, "Retrieval of Archival Finding Aids Using World Wide Web Search Engines," American Archivist 62 (Fall 1999): 206-28;
29. and Helen R. Tibbo and Lokman I. Meho, "Finding Aids on the World Wide Web," American Archivist 64 (Spring/Summer 2001): 61-77.
30. Linda J. Long, "Question Negotiation in the Archival Setting: The Use of Interpersonal Communication Techniques in the Reference Interview," American Archivist 52 (Winter 1989).
31. Helen R. Tibbo, "Interviewing Techniques for Remote Reference: Electronic Versus Traditional Environments," American Archivist 58 (Summer 1995): 294-310.
32. Richard C. Lytle, "Intellectual Access to Archives: I. Provenance and Content Indexing Methods of Subject Retrieval," American Archivist 43 (Winter 1980): 63-75
33. "Intellectual Access to Archives: II. Report of an Experiment Comparing Provenance and Content Indexing Methods of Subject Retrieval," American Archivist 43 (Spring 1980): 191-207.
34. For a discussion of archival representation and why the association between surrogate and primary source is difficult, see Elizabeth Yakel, "Archival Representation," Archival Science 3, no. 1 (2003): 1-25.
35. Michael Stevens, "The Historian and Archival Finding Aids," Georgia Archive 5 (Winter 1977): 64-74.
36. Wendy Duff and Penka Stoyanova, "Transforming the Crazy Quilt: Archival Displays from a Users' Point of View," Archivaria 45 (Spring 1998): 44-79
37. and Robert Spindler and Richard Pearce-Moses, "Does AMC Mean Archives Made Complicated? Patron Understanding of USMARC AMC Catalog Records," American Archivist 56 (Spring 1993): 330-41.
38. Elizabeth Yakel, "EAD Interface Design for the User's Perspective" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Denver, Colo., 28 August-3 September 2000);
39. and Burt Altman and John R. Nemmers, "The Usability of On-line Archival Resources: The Polaris Project Finding Aid," American Archivist 64 (Spring / Summer 2001): 121-31.
40. See also, Burt Altman, "Collections and Finding Aids on the World Wide Web: Will They Be Used?" Reach Out 2 (1996/97): 3-5.
41. Conway, Partners in Research, 95.
42. For example, see: Marcus C. Robyns, "The Archivist as Educator: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into Historical Research Methods Instruction," American Archivist 64 (Fall/Winter 2001): 363-84;
43. Ken Osborne, "Archives in the Classroom," Archivaria 23 (Winter 1986-87): 16-40;
44. James W. Hopkins and Duane Reed, "Teaching Historical Methods Through the Archives: United States Air Force Academy," Colorado Libraries 19 (Summer 1993): 35-37;
45. and Patricia L. Adams, "Primary Sources and Senior Citizens in the Classroom," American Archivist 50 (Spring 1987): 239-42.
46. Gordon, Using the Nation's Documentary Heritage, 25.
47. For example, see John E. Stovel, "Document Analysis as a Tool to Strengthen Student Writing," History Teacher 33, no. 4 (2000): 501-9;
48. Phillip Van Fossen and James M. Shiveley, "Using the Internet to Create Primary Source Teaching Packets," Social Studies 91 (November / December 2000): 244-52;
49. and James E. Hansen II and John Newman, "Training History Students in Working Archives, History Teacher 13, no. 2 (1980): 211-21.
50. The principal work in this area is Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).
51. See also, Jean-François Rouet, M. Anne Britt, Robert A. Mason, and Charles A. Perfetti, "Using Multiple Sources of Evidence to Reason about History," Journal of Educational Psychology 88 (September 1996): 478-93;
52. and Samuel S. Wineburg, "Historical Problem Solving: A Study of the Cognitive Processes Used in the Evaluation of Documentary Pictorial Evidence," Journal of Educational Psychology 83 (March 1991): 73-87.
53. Robyns, "The Archivist as Educator," passim.
54. Randy Bass, "The Garden in the Machine," available at (4 December 2002).
55. Atlas.ti began as a research project at the Technical University of Berlin and is now developed by the author, Thomas Muhr, of Scientific Software Development in Berlin. For an overview of the functions and technical capabilities, see (4 December 2002). For an analysis of this software, see Christine A. Barry, "Choosing Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Atlas/ti and Nudist Compared," Sociological Research Online 3/3 (1998), available at (4 December 2002).
56. Glaser and Chi, "Overview," xvii.
57. Barbara C. Orbach, "The View from the Researcher's Desk: Historian's Perceptions of Research and Repositories," American Archivist 54 (Winter 1991): 37
58. Walter R. Reitman, Cognition and Thought (New York: Wiley, 1965), 141.
59. Herbert Simon, "The Structure of Ill-Structured Problems," Artificial Intelligence 4 (1983): 187.
60. Bearman, "User Presentation Language in Archives," passim.
61. Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, 75-80.
62. Stevens, "The Historian and Archival Finding Aids," 69-70.