The Archives at the Tip of Their Fingers: Exploring User Reactions to Large-Scale Digitization

Advances in digital image capture technology and the adoption of More Product, Less Process methods have resulted in special collections and archives large-scale digitization that creates a new kind of digital surrogate. Mirroring and reusing aggregate archival arrangement and description, these digital surrogates represent multiple items and are minimally described as a whole. The authors conducted interviews to explore user reactions to this digitization method at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This study found that large-scale digitization does have a positive impact for users, although additional strategies may be required to maximize the usefulness of the resulting digital objects.