A critical examination of ArchWay : Nova Scotia's database of archival descriptions

Abstract

This thesis critically examines ArchWay--Nova Scotia's Database of Archival Descriptions, giving reasons for its creation and describing the development of the database with illustrations of how the database can be used for research. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the ArchWay project as a process and then as a product while assessing the reasons for its creation. The method used in this thesis is similar to that of a case study. To evaluate both the process and the product of ArchWay, published studies of similar databases are explored and the results of these studies are then applied to the database for analysis. A discussion about the development of the database provides the background necessary to understanding the building of ArchWay. A walkthrough of the database's screens is given as an illustration of how ArchWay works. Both the discussion and the walkthrough are used to analyse the project. The results and analysis evaluate the process and the product using the literature review, the background discussion, and a user survey of Archway's features. The author argues that ArchWay has met only two of the seven the performance measures. The user survey indicates that ArchWay is not user-friendly.