Hello all! My name is Allison and I’m a graduate student in the dual Master’s of Library & Information Science and Master’s in Archival Studies program at UBC Vancouver.
I’m very interested in local history, which is what drew me to this co-op position. In Vancouver, I have led local history walking and bus tours about labour history and social justice. This summer, I am really enjoying learning about the history of the Okanagan. I am also looking forward to working with our partner organizations and learning more about the work of local heritage institutions.
Before beginning graduate school I worked in non-profit communications and marketing, and this summer I am putting those skills to work by developing a communications plan for the Digitized Okanagan History project. You can look forward to us launching our presence on social media in a few short weeks!
I’m also very interested in users’ experiences of archives and in making archival materials more accessible. Since this is the main objective of DOH, I am hoping to learn a lot about this during my co-op position.
Because our users are online, understanding their user experience primarily means setting up tools to track how people use our website. We are curious about things like what search terms people use, how these relate to the subject headings we’ve assigned for materials, and what users’ behaviour patterns are on the site.
In addition to these communications and user experience tasks, I’ll be updating our procedures, improving our Access database, and reviewing our metadata for upload into the DOH Arca repository. This promises to be a busy and rewarding co-op position!
If you have any questions for me, or feedback on our new communications efforts or the usability of our site, please leave a comment or send me an email.
