Dear colleagues,
Although the archives field seeks to center users in our work and archivists often discuss the need to conduct user experience work -- including usability work and user studies and testing to support various initiatives -- there is not yet a professional community of practice that supports or advocates for the user experience work necessary to truly understand our users' needs.
In order to take advantage of the opportunity to address this significant professional gap, an issue we focused on through our participation in Stanford University's Lighting the Way Working Meeting, we hope to form a Society of American Archivists (SAA) User Experience Section to focus on this area of professional practice.
We have created a very brief petition to gauge interest in this initiative that will be open until the end of the day December 5. We would greatly appreciate your participation especially as we need 100 signatures for the proposal we plan to submit to the SAA Council. Please note that if you share your name in the petition and indicate "yes" in support of the section being formed, we will include your signature on our proposal to SAA Council. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Faith Charlton (Princeton University Library), Alison Clemens (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University), Betts Coup (Houghton Library, Harvard University), and Zoe Hill (Houghton Library, Harvard University).