National Library Board (NLB)
Reimagining the Archives Discovery Experience
Team
Nada (me!)
Under the supervision of Andre Hui + Snippets Team
Contributions
Interviews
Concept Research
UI Design
Results
Digital Prototype was used to pitch project idea to relevant stakeholders within NLB & used as the basis for a project which will be launched in Summer 2025!
Background
With the upcoming NLB30 celebration (30 years of NLB), the team is currently working on designing products to celebrate all facets of NLB– including the Archives.
National Library Board can be separated into three functioning pillars: National Library(NL), Public Libraries(PL), and National Archives(NAS). As a variety of products or programmes were already created to highlight NL and PL (including a little card game that I helped design + conduct user testing on during the first half of my internship!), there was a gap in celebrating the Archives. The goal of this project is to explore different possibilities on how we can celebrate the archives in NLB30, and use it to complement current efforts (be it BAU projects, current archive initiatives, or the other concurrent NLB30 products).
Understanding the Current State
While the archives host a large repository of content, Archives Online has a relatively low touchpoint, and the current retrieval process isn’t quite streamlined creating friction points in the current archive experience.
This was highlighted from a series of informal interviews, which included conversations with the NAS team, Andre (my manager, also previously from NAS!), and the general public.
Understanding the Current Efforts
A few of these pain points arise from the poor searchability and discoverability of archive content.
While Archives Online serves as the front-facing touchpoint for users, the NAS team’s main struggle focuses on something they refer to as their metadata problem which is reflected on the current state of searchability and discoverability on their platform.
Currently, meta-tags are based on record descriptions (as submitted by the source), and manually edited by the NAS team.
How can we explore different ways to celebrate the archives in NLB30?
Solution Exploration
Potential Problem Spaces
Aside from what we call the Metatagging Problem, we also wanted to create space for some playful explorations and experiences that is not directly linked to the searchability of archive content, but perhaps other interactions we might be able to have with it– at the end of the day, our project objective is to create something that celebrates the archives.
For this project, we defined four potential areas within the overall NAS experience which could serve as the grounds of the concept exploration.
Solution Exploration
Concept Explorations
NLB can celebrate 30 years through a curated campaign of that documents the growth of NLB throughout the years via the Archives. This curated campaign (of NLB30) can also be the start of a series of curation efforts used to revitalise and promote NAS content for storytelling efforts.
Not so much of a solution that celebrates, but this feature looks into involving the public in improving the metadata of archive content. Through designing a feature that allows users to contribute to meta-tags, this can hopefully improve the searchability of content allowing for better content exploration on Archives Online.
Inspired by how the MET hosts public domain content on their archival website, NAS could host a collection of local archive content that is free for usage, accompanied by a platform that allows for simple collage creations. This leans onto the NLB30 theme of creation, and allows for playful interactions with the archive material without the lengthy retrieval process. The collages created on this platform can then be displayed throughout our libraries or also incorporated into other NLB30 products– this allows the archives content to be more front-facing within NLB's physical spaces.
Note: these concepts were fleshed out further for an internal pitch deck; here we’ve just included core components that best represent the idea without complicating it with full-on UIs or extended user flows!
Finalised Solution
Ultimately, while these concepts explored different facets of painpoints or gap for NAS, we’ve highlighted Discover + Contribute to be more aligned for NLB30.
This include refining concept 1 & 2 into our final concept: a platform that allows users to better discover public domain archives content and contribute to metatagging.
Improving Discovery
How can we invite users to interact and discover with archives content more frequently?
A big friction point arises from outdated UI on archives online, accompanied with the overcomplicated search and retrieval process. Thus, we wanted to design an initial touchpoint that boasts a more modern UI, fuelled by public domain archive content– this removes the need for an additional retrieval process.
Here, we've mainly explored two things:
Improving Searchability
How can we rely on the public to improve our metadata?
To address the metatagging problem we've mentioned earlier, we wanted to introduce a feature that allows for users to contribute to metatagging of archival records. This involves ai-generated tags as suggestions alongside manually created tags that a user can add to an image. This is then moderated and validated through a system before it officially becomes approved tags for the entry.
