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The informational needs of historians researching women : an archival user study

University of British Columbia

This thesis examines the informational needs of historians researching women as a subject in archives. The research methodology employed combines two types of user studies, the questionnaire and the reference analysis, in order to determine both the use and usefulness of archival materials and finding aids for historians researching women. This study begins with an overview of the literature on user studies. The thesis then outlines both the kinds of materials and the information historians researching women require. Finally, this study looks at the way historians researching women locate relevant materials and concomitantly the effectiveness of current descriptive policies and practices in dealing with the needs of this research group. This thesis concludes by suggesting a number of ways in which archivists can respond to the informational needs of historians researching women in archives. Firstly, a considerable amount of documentation relevant to the study of women remains to be acquired by archival repositories. While archives should continue to acquire textual materials, more emphasis needs to be placed upon the acquisition of non-textual materials since these materials are also very useful to historians researching women in archives. Secondly, archivists must focus more attention on the informational value of their holdings since the majority of historians researching women are interested in the information the records contain about people, events or subject area and not the description of institutional life contained in records. Thirdly this study demonstrates the need for more subject oriented finding aids. Archivists can improve subject access to their holdings through the preparation of thematic guides, by the creation of more analytical inventory descriptions and by indexing or cataloguing women's records.

Text

2010-06-28

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26047

Archival Studies

University of British Columbia

Graduate