Dear Colleagues,

RE: Usability of Archival Descriptions Study
Archival document collections are rich resources for historians,
researchers and literary scholars, and finding aids prepared by
archivists are often the key to accessing these collections. At the
Faculty of Information Studies at the University of
Toronto, we are currently examining how these finding aids are used by
researchers, with the goal of improving the
structure and language of finding aids to better serve the research
community.

We are looking for beginner and experienced archives users, who do not
have formal training as archivists or librarians, to participate in our
SSHRC funded study, Usability of Archival Descriptions, which will run
throughout the month of July 2002. Study participants will be asked to
use two different finding aids, one paper and one online, and to explain
how they use these resources to find information. The study session will
take approximately two hours and participant will receive 30$ as a
nominal compensation.

We realize that your time is valuable, but hope that you will consider
participating.  We would also appreciate if you
could forward this message to any of your friends or colleagues who have
done archival research and might wish to participate.

To volunteer, please call :  416-978-4715
or e-mail: [log in to unmask]

Thank you for your consideration.

Elaine Toms
Associate Professor
Faculty of Information Studies
University of Toronto