On day three of IIPC 2017 (day 1, day 2), we heard more about what I see as the two main themes of the conference: archives users and metadata for provenance.

On the user front, I’ll point out Sumitra Duncan’s talk on NYARC Discovery; like WALK, presented yesterday, this project aggregates search across multiple archives, improving access for users. Peter Webster of Webster Research & Consulting and Chris Fryer from the Parliamentary Archives spoke about their study of the archive’s users: the questions of what users want and need, and how they actually use the archive, are fundamental. How we think archives should or could be used may not be as pertinent as we imagine…

On the metadata front, Emily Maemura and Nicholas Worby from the University of Toronto spoke about the ways in which documentation and curatorial process affect users’ experience of and access to archives — the staffing history of a collecting organization, for example, could be an important part of understanding why a web archive contains what it does. Jackie Dooley (OCLC Research), Alexis Antracoli (Princeton University), and Karen Stoll Farrell (Frick Art Reference Library) presented their work on developing web archiving metadata best practices to meet user needs — and it becomes clear that my two main themes could really be seen as one. OCLC Research will issue their reports in July.

I’ll also point out Nicholas Taylor’s excellent talk on the legal use cases for archives, and, of course, LIL’s Anastasia Aizman and Matt Phillips, who gave a super talk on their ongoing work on comparing web archives. Thanks again, and hope to see you all next year!