EAD Candy

I've been working on an EAD project for the Richard E. Byrd Papers and have been looking at other organizations' methods of presentation. The traditional layout like University of Michigan's Glenn Allan Papers is the kind of presentation I'm learning towards. But I found some sites that took things a bit farther. University of Michigan's Polar Bear Expedition is set up more like a webpage with links to different parts of the finding aid.

I started to think about different ways organizations present their finding aids. A few weeks ago, I read about Tab Candy, a new addition to Firefox that re-works the traditional browser tab.

An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

This addresses many problems that we have when it comes to handling virtual information. I think these user needs and problems translate to navigating EAD finding aids as well.

Infoguilt - Utilizing Tab Candy allows the user to set things aside that they genuinely want to read and see, but just don't have the immediate time availability. With the wealth of information that goes into a finding aid, we cannot expect the user to realistically see everything at once. Adding wordy paragraphs and introductions to the finding aid may almost discourage a user from browsing. If you think of a letter or email, are you more likely to read everything in a paragraph-style format or in a bullet-list format? With collections that may be divided into 20 or more series, then even more subseries, and then even more boxes, it can be easy for a user to get lost without a concise map.

Scattered work - Users don't like having to navigate through scattered tabs. As an admitted over-user of the target="_blank" code, I have to remember that keeping a user interested and happy is more important than keeping a user on your page if they aren't even using it. Avoiding the "Open in new..." command would help someone stay in one area for their one task. Remember, it's important to utilize breadcrumbs or some other directional aid, so that your user won't get lost.

Organizing virtual space - With so much information in a finding aid, it can be difficult for a user to continually keep track of which boxes he or she may want to eventually research more in depth. Having an option to "save" a specific file or page without cluttering the user's work space is a lesson that can be taken from Tab Candy. Since implementing a "star" or "save" element to your finding aid may be tricky, an easier way may be to offer a "Email this page" feature. This would, of course, be part of the actual web page rather than the EAD finding aid, but a good step to implement to help the user remember what they want to come back to. Again, it leads back to avoiding infoguilt!

What are your thoughts on presenting EAD finding aids? Have you found a specific method or feature that is working really well for your organization? I would love to hear more about specific cases!