Promoting a Culture of Assessment in Archives and Special Collections
Innovative archivists, manuscript curators, and records managers need to know:
How effectively does this repository support our users’ research needs?
Are we learning as an organization by using data collected about the use of our collections to drive program improvement?
Can we demonstrate our effectiveness in support of our unit's goals?
Our project seeks to promote a culture of assessment in the archival domain by creating standardized user-based evaluation tools and other performance measures. Our user-based evaluation toolkits are ready-made packages that include validated, tested questionnaires, administration and coding instructions, and sample reports illustrating how to effectively communicate study results to others. Adoption of these standardized measures will support the movement to allow repositories to compare their performance with others' thereby identifying best practices, and helping all institutions improve their user services.
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
Archival Metrics is a joint project of the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the University of Toronto. Have questions? Contact us at archivalmetricsadmin@umich.edu!