American Archivist Calls for Proposals on User Experience

The American Archivist Editorial Board invites proposal submissions for a special section in American Archivist, illuminating the wide-ranging spectrum of user experience topics and initiatives in the archives field today.

The revised DACS Principles set the expectation that archivists center users in their work, but User Experience has not always had a strong presence in archival literature or in archival work. While acknowledging that multiple articles have been published over the last couple of decades regarding online finding aids and the encoding standard EAD, further and more expansive explorations of User Experience in the archives have been limited. The need for continued research into how users experience archives—their description and content—remains.

Archivists have a wide range of questions regarding user experience and the archival experience such as: how do marginalized individuals experience archival research? How do we smooth the tension between preservation and access? How do we make it easier for new researchers to read handwritten manuscripts, or understand the language used in the context of official documents from bygone eras? How do we seamlessly bridge collections across institutions? What practices no longer serve us, or may even conflict with our wider goals? These are just a few questions that might be explored in American Archivist, and answers might move our profession forward, lead to new discoveries, and make everyone’s work a little more joyful.

In order to review and answer these questions, American Archivist will dedicate a Special Section on User Experience for its 2026 Spring/Summer issue. The goal of this special section is to showcase the importance of this work to the wider archival community. As part of efforts to create a community of practice and to foster equitable, long-term professional and institutional support for user experience work, the special section’s editorial team hopes to initiate a dialogue within the profession about best practices in designing and evaluating the research environments we create. Whether these spaces are physical or digital, our goal is to facilitate access, discovery, and use of primary source materials.

Proposal submissions can explore the many facets of user experience in the archival field, including but not limited to:

• Participatory Design Practice
• Case Studies in UX Design in Archives
• User Experience Research Findings
• Usability Studies
• Marginalized Populations’ Experiences with Archival Research
• UX Research Methods Overview
• Presenting UX Research to Leadership
• Literature Reviews

We seek submissions from authors with a variety of career experiences and diverse perspectives related to user experience work. The editorial team especially encourages submissions from first-time authors and early-career archives and special collections professionals, as well as from colleagues working in nonprofit organizations; HBCUs, AANAPISIs, and/or HSIs; public libraries; museums; and community archives.

Proposals should include a tentative title and an abstract of no more than 500 words. Please indicate whether your article will fall into one of the following forms:

• Research Articles: analytical and critical expositions based on original investigation or on systematic review of literature. (Suggested length: 8,000 words)

• Case Studies: analytical reports of projects or activities that take place in a specific setting and offer the basis for emulation or comparison in other settings. (Suggested length: 3,000 words)

• Perspectives: commentaries, reflective or opinion pieces, addressing issues or practices that concern archivists and their constituents. (Suggested length: 2,000-2500 words)

• Professional Resources: can be annotated bibliographies, other items designed for practical use within the profession, or essays that review the developments (as opposed to the literature) in specified areas in a way that describes particular initiatives and places them in the context of broader trends. (Length varies)

American Archivist is the peer-reviewed, semi-annual journal of the Society of American Archivists. Established in 1938, the journal seeks to reflect thinking about theoretical and practical developments in the archival profession; the relationships between archivists and the creators and users of archives; and cultural, social, legal, and technological developments that affect the nature of recorded information and the need to create and maintain it. 

Proposals will be reviewed by the editorial team, following American Archivist editorial policies. All submissions selected for prospective inclusion in this special section will go through the American Archivist peer review process, the rubric for which can be found here. Please use this google form to submit your proposal.

Inquiries can be sent to Betts Coup, a member of the editorial team, at elizabeth_coup@harvard.edu. 

The deadline for proposals is February 1, 2025.

Editorial Team

Faith Charlton
Lead Processing Archivist, Special Collections Firestone 
Princeton University Library

Alison Clemens
Director, Access Services and Operations
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale Library

Betts Coup
Head of Archival Operations
Technical Services for Archives and Special Collections
Harvard University Archives, Arts, and Special Collections

Shaun Ellis
Library Software Engineer
Princeton University Library