Artefactual literacy-related abilities for historians’ effective seeking and use of primary resources

This study explored historians’ archival search behaviour from Yakel and Torres’ User Expertise in Archives (UEA) model. The model contained three types of knowledge that influence researchers’ information seeking: domain knowledge, artefactual literacy, intelligence. paper reported on the literacy-related abilities behaviour. A naturalistic inquiry approach was adopted to twelve history master’s students’ thesis research In-depth interviewing used collect narratives experiences. inductive constant comparisons open/axial coding were analysis. Artefactual literacy related categorized into external criticism-related internal criticism-related. former included abilities: understanding production context primary sources, ability differentiate between intentional unintentional cope with language limitations. latter two putting oneself shoe historical figure understudy, comparing documents different perspectives. UEA is a powerful analytic for studying archive users’ Archivists should care about how influenced decisions actions.