Digital vs Physical Archive Spaces

Credit: Ingenium/A. Torrance

Background

The research that I would like to propose came to light during a presentation given to our class by Ingenium: Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation. Two questions that Ingenium suggested in their presentation piqued my interest in their digital archives as well as the physical space that they have to offer to researchers. One of those questions surrounded topics of how their information is being used and how knowing the answer to that could aid in their advancement of their online accessibility. The other question that interested me was regarding how the library and archives contribute to the museum mandate. Combining both of these ideas, I realized I wanted to explore how both their digital presence and their physical research spaces interact and, how the knowledge of this could potentially benefit Ingenium. A recent book that I had been reading at the time entitled “The Revenge of Analog” by David Sax, also played a role in my decision to observe the relationship between physical and the digital research spaces. This book looks at the relationship that people have with both digital and analog items and, in this case, his focus was on highlighting the analog and its benefits. With that in mind, and with the knowledge that Ingenium has recently begun putting a lot of their collection online for open access, I decided I wanted to focus my research on the interaction that researchers have with museums and archives, both online and in-person. The questions driving this research are the following:

Research Question: How does the availability of archival information online affect how researchers are interacting with the physical space of the archive?

Sub-question: Does the online availability change the type of research that is being done in the physical space now that researchers are able to do some of their research online?

Context and Literature Review

While the topics of the research question are often discussed in academic literature, the focus seems to be more on the benefits of digitization and digital archives and not on the use of the physical space of a research site. This gap in the literature is one of the main driving factors for this research. Marcella (2017) describes the initiatives in terms of special collections and digitization, however, does not discuss necessarily whether or not this digitization is changing the research that is done on-site. The benefits to digitization are listed widely and, separately so are the benefits to accessing physical objects. This being said, authors do not seem to discuss the relationship between these two (Green & Lampron, 2017; Marcella, 2017). However, one author did discuss the success of the digitization of the Abbey Theatre archive at National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway in attracting researchers to the campus (Cox, 2017).

There are many authors who talk about the benefits of digital archives (Bishop, 2017; Correa, 2017; Cox, 2017; Green & Lampron, 2017; Marcella, 2017). These benefits can include; the large amount of information that is available; the ability to quickly search through documents digitally (Bishop, 2017; Correa, 2017; Cox, 2017; Green & Lampron, 2017; Marcella, 2017); the less intimidating nature of researching online (Bishop, 2017); and access to information that may not otherwise been accessible (Al-Mutawa, 2019; Bishop, 2017; Green & Lampron, 2017; Jones, 2004; Marcella, 2017). When collections are not digitized, they become hidden collections, which can also create gaps in research for scholars (Jones, 2004; Marcella, 2017). Through digitization, history can come to light that may not have previously. Digitization is very important since it creates access and awareness to cultural record that may otherwise be inaccessible (Jones, 2004).

There is literature showing that researchers still often prefer physical interaction with the archival material (Green & Lampron, 2017) and believe it is an essential part of research (Correa, 2017).

If they were not able to have physical access, they wished to have tools that would allow for interactivity with digital collections, similar as they would hope to have with physical objects or documents (Green & Lampron, 2017). Both the physical and digital forms of archives are important and useful (Correa, 2017) and so this research aims to bring them together and observe their relationship.

While not directly archives and library research space, there are brief mentions of the value of marketing a museum’s website and attracting visitors to the physical site (Roth-Katz, 2012). Roth-Katz also talks about how the information on a museum or archive’s website can affect how someone does in-person research. Even though digitization is important there are still efforts, such as outreach (Marcella, 2017) to bring people to the physical building and so it is evident that museums and archives themselves want visitors and their digitization efforts are meant to aid in that and not the opposite.

All of the reading done for this proposal was interesting and insightful regarding various aspects of my research questions. That being said, there is clearly a lack of research done specifically surrounding the topic that I would like to research. As mentioned by Roth-Katz, research should be done on this topic surrounding the opinions of both the users and the information professionals involved in the archival world. The research question of this proposal will aim to do just that.

Methodology

Ingenium has recently created their digital archive and so I am proposing to do a case study focusing on their collection and their research clientele. This research will take on a mixed method approach combining a survey, interviews, and usage data from Ingenium’s digital archives. It will be a convergent design where all of the various data collection will happen in one phase and the results will be merged for a final analysis. As of right now, I do not have a theoretical framework on which to base this research but I will be looking for advice from a professional in the field to strengthen that portion of my research set up.

The participants will include researchers using the digital archives, researchers using Ingenium's physical space, and staff members of Ingenium who interact with researchers.

Recruitment: The online participants will be recruited through a short survey that will be linked to the digital archive website. If they choose to aid in the research and take the survey, the first question of this survey will ask whether or not they are using the digital archives for research. If the answer is yes the survey will continue and ask short simple questions, both open and closed-ended, regarding their use of the archives. In terms of the in-person participants, a recruitment poster will be left on tables at Ingenium asking for participants wanting to be involved in research and will explain that there will be a small incentive, most likely a gift card for a coffee restaurant, if they participate. On this poster, there will also be a link to the online survey so that if anyone wishes to fill it out, they may on their own time. All of the information from survey and interview participants will be collected the same week for continuity and so the call for participants at Ingenium will go out a month prior in order to hopefully gain enough interest. The goal would be 10 in-person participants however, I will be contacting the Chief Knowledge Officer of Ingenium in order to gain better insight on the average number of users they have in the space in a week. This information may change the amount of participants and the amount of time to do the interviews.

Credit: Ingenium/A. Torrance

Data Collection: The interviews will consist of mainly open-ended questions regarding the researchers' use of the space and their knowledge of and use of the open-access digital archives. The surveys done online will consist of both open and closed-ended questions focusing on the reasons behind their use of the digital archives and surveying their knowledge and use of the physical space. Alongside the interviews and surveys, I will also be completing a participant observation on site at Ingenium, acting as a researcher utilizing the archives during the public hours, in order to gain more perspective on the use of the space.

Data Analysis: After the week of qualitative data collection, in collaboration with Ingenium, I will collect the usage data from their digital archives to be used as a quantitative comparison. The text information from interviews and any longer answer survey questions will be coded and analyzed using software such as NVivo. With both the qualitative and quantitative data, I will compare and observe the relationship between the use of the digital and the physical archives. From this I will draw a conclusion and provide suggestions for future research in this domain.

Knowledge Mobilization: The results of the research will be published, the journal has not yet been decided, and also sent to Ingenium for any use they choose. The results would likely also be sent to “The Museum Scholar”, an open-access journal for museum students and emerging scholars.

I am very interested in this topic and excited to propose this research, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. As I am still working on finalizing details, any feedback would be much appreciated. Thank you!