Creating archival descriptions in a digital environment and communicating across the Internet is not the same as traditional paper-based communication. As in other cultural domains, in archival description the medium influences the structure and content of information. The SIASFI Project and the Online Guide to the State Archives of Florence are…

This article documents a lifecycle approach to employing user-centered design, covering both qualitative and quantitative data gathering methods in support of using this approach for product design, usability testing, and market research. The author provides specific case studies of usability studies, focus groups, interviews, ethnographic…

As more archival metadata and archival records become available online, providing effective interfaces to those materials is increasingly important to give users access. This article describes five approaches from the hypertext and visualization research communities which can be used to improve such access: (1) navigating hierarchical structures,…

This article highlights the California Cultures Project as a case study examining the architecture and framework required to support the deployment of digital objects as virtual collections at the California Digital Library. Chronologically arranged, it describes the Online Archive of California (OAC) Working Group's functional requirements for…