Three archives:
Oral History and Folklore Collection—preservation and access digitization of audio recordings; the National Library of Australia.
The archive portal is designed with a good mix of text and images. It looks easy to navigate. It seems easy to navigate. If I hadn’t had so much trouble connecting, I can imagine happily spending a lot of time browsing, without having a clear idea ahead of time of what I want to look for. The interface seems to guide me. The pages give just enough context to get me interested, there are lots of photos. I did not at first realize that this was an Australian oral history collection, and I’m not particularly interested in Australia, at least I wasn’t going in, but the archive is so well designed, I feel seduced into exploring more.
The archive portal is text based. This is an area I do have significant interest in, yet I am discouraged by the archive portal. It does not look well designed and my first impression is that it might be difficult to find the stuff I want. However, once I’ve clicked on the “Rare Book & Special Collections” link, the page looks great. There’s a yummy looking “bookmark column” right in the middle about the Lincoln and Obama inaugural bible I’d like to read about. But wait a minute! That’s not about women’s suffrage! I guess I have unwittingly gone to just the general Library of Congress “Rare Book & Special Collections” page, though from the way the archive portal looked I had thought I was going to rare books and special collections to do with women’s suffrage. Argh.
Sophia Smith Collection, Women’s History Archives and Manuscripts at Smith College
This archive is attractive and easy to maneuver, though I'm not sure it's that extensive. It has some great images of posters, pins, and photographs from the early suffrage movement, though.
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