Initial Contact Email Notice

[INITIAL EMAIL]

Dear [name of participant]:

We are contacting you because we are conducting a national evaluation of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Opening History portal <http://imlsdcc.grainger.illinois.edu/history>, one of the world’s largest portals to digital primary sources on U.S. history and culture. Opening History aggregates more than 1,000 collections and more than 1,000,000 items from libraries, museums, and archives throughout the U.S. As a reference service provider at a [public/academic] library, you (and your library’s users) are a central part of our target user group.

This web-based survey comprises 16 questions. The survey should take you no more than 20 minutes to complete. The aim of this research is to determine how service providers in libraries perceive of the quality and scope of Opening History in comparison to similar digital resources. Because Opening History is a resource of national scope meant to appeal to all sorts of historical researchers, we are gathering opinions from service providers at libraries of varying types and sizes from throughout the U.S.

The survey will ask you to try using the Opening History portal, and then to share your opinions on its usefulness, relative to other digital resources you already use.

We sincerely hope you will take a few minutes to help us improve this growing national resource, intended for use by you and your library’s users. This survey is anonymous. Your participation is entirely voluntary and your decision whether or not to participate will in no way adversely affect your future relations with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. You are free to discontinue participation in the survey at any time. The results of this survey will be shared in a final report to IMLS, our funding agency and may also help inform publications of IMLS DCC research findings on large-scale aggregations.

If you have questions, please contact me at <[email protected]>, or by phone at (217) 244-2164. You may also contact Principal Investigator Carole Palmer (email: [email protected], voice: 217-244-0653).

Please print a copy of this email for your records.

Sincerely,

Katrina Fenlon

Project Coordinator, IMLS Digital Collections and Content Project

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

University of Illinois

[email protected]