Autistic use of archives

[J Peach]

Hello, I am a masters student in archive administration and records management who has Aspergers Syndrome and ADHD.

I am thinking of writing a masters dissertation about the experience autistic people have of using archives.

I will probably need to do a survey so I am testing the water to see how many autistic people have used the archive and would be willing to be surveyed on their experience.

Please respond if you have used an archive and would potentially in future be okay with being surveyed on it.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Do you mean a library? An institution where books and other media can be borrowed?

Or do you mean an archive, which is a protected collection of information, documents, artifacts, etc?

Because I will give two very different answers depending on what you need.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I had to look up what "archive administration" was. It is an important responsibility, not losing data.

So, I am curious. What is your "angle" on this? Comparing autistics and neurotypicals think in terms of "how" they retrieve data, key words, phrases, etc.? Are current retrieval systems "user-friendly" with the autistic brain as opposed to the neurotypical brain?

The only thing that I use almost daily are the PubMed and Google Scholar data bases. Within that context, I have become quite proficient at data retrieval and can do it far quicker than most. However, at the hospital, we have a data base called "PolicyTech" that has all the current policies and procedures for the hospital system. This is NOT user-friendly as what I would consider "obvious" or "most applicable" key word searches often end up with "no displayed data". So, I am of the thinking that ease of use has more to do with the "intelligence" of the system, or perhaps the creator's ability to "tag" key words for the user.

 

[J Peach]

Do you mean a library? An institution where books and other media can be borrowed?

Or do you mean an archive, which is a protected collection of information, documents, artifacts, etc?

Because I will give two very different answers depending on what you need.

Hello, I mean an archive, the protected collection of information, documents, artifacts

 

[J Peach]

I had to look up what "archive administration" was. It is an important responsibility, not losing data.

So, I am curious. What is your "angle" on this? Comparing autistics and neurotypicals think in terms of "how" they retrieve data, key words, phrases, etc.? Are current retrieval systems "user-friendly" with the autistic brain as opposed to the neurotypical brain?

The only thing that I use almost daily are the PubMed and Google Scholar data bases. Within that context, I have become quite proficient at data retrieval and can do it far quicker than most. However, at the hospital, we have a data base called "PolicyTech" that has all the current policies and procedures for the hospital system. This is NOT user-friendly as what I would consider "obvious" or "most applicable" key word searches often end up with "no displayed data". So, I am of the thinking that ease of use has more to do with the "intelligence" of the system, or perhaps the creator's ability to "tag" key words for the user.

Hello, my angle is I will be effectively looking at how autistic people use an archive. There will be comparisons to neurotypicals. How do autistic people find the building when they visit it? What are there thoughts on the service from staff? and what are there thoughts about the website if it is online? The archive I am interested in making comparisons for is an archive that holds historical documents such as the national archives at The National Archives. I want to know about experiences of on site and online access to an archive, so thank you for sharing your experiences using online archives.

 

[J Peach]

Hello

I am a Masters student at UCL Department of Information Studies. I am researching autistic access to the archive and I am on the autism spectrum. Archives are defined as "collections of information – known as records" by the National Archives. There are local county archives, national archives and community archives for example.

I will examine how autistic people use archives, the barriers to archive use and how people experience them. I hope to use the survey results to improve archive accessibility for autistic people. If you have visited an archive please follow this link https://qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_2f1U39d0zTF8ITk to complete the survey.