1. Communicating Context: The Power of Digital Interfaces Jeanne Kramer-Smyth University of Maryland, College Park Spellbound Blog

2. What are we going to talk about? Interface Design Examples of interfaces What can YOU do to support preservation of context and original order in the interfaces being built in your organization?

3. Assumptions You are not software developers Focus on digitized collections

4. Top Priorities for Interface Design Simple Clear Consistent Support hunt for more information

5. My favorite book on interface design!

6. Building Blocks Communicate contextual Information Support navigation among related records Provide useful Search Results Preserve the relationships among individual records through careful planning

7. Contextual Information Five Ws (who, what, when, where & why) Historical and Biographical Information Finding Aid Institution Information

8. Context Example

10. Single Record with Context

12. Multiple Records with Context

14. Search Results Many Paths to the Same Record

16. Interface Evaluation Checklist Five Ws (who, what, when, where & why) Finding Aid Institution Information Rights information Finding related records Support for many paths to records Useful search results

17. Final Thoughts Preserving some level of context is easier than preserving original order There are lots of amazing approaches being tried Good web design will go a long way towards preserving context Educate your web designers about Archival Concepts

18. Contact Info & Questions Jeanne Kramer-Smyth http://www.SpellboundBlog.com jeanne@spellboundblog.com This presentation will be available online on the Spellbound Blog site after the conference.