Digital Archives

Upon reading the article, Archive Experiences: A Vision for User-Centered Design in the Digital Humanities and agreeing with the fallacies of such archives in the sense of many of them not excelling in the user-centered interfaces, I searched for the "Best Digital Archives" in google and one of the first results was a person talking about how the British Library is one of the best in the world and decided to check it out.

Ironically, the first section I decided to check out "Leonardo de Vinci's collections and the archivist has stated "it is not arranged in any specific order" but intends to do so in the future.  Regardless of the lack of specific order, immediately, the layout is quite nice.  The scanning of his papers, drawings, sketches, etc. is visually appealing and as the user clicks on each page it folds over nicely just like a hands on book.  There are descriptions of each page on the left written from the archivist, which I personally enjoy.

I'm not quite sure I would say that this is the most user-friendly digital archive as I had to sift through a lot before I figured out what was going on.  The initial page is organized and inviting and the presentation of the material is pleasant on the eyes and informative, however, when searching for the Shakespeare archive (which is suppose to be the best) it took a while to find.
On the homepage the archives are organized via maps, books, exhibitions and this separations categories I find to be incredibly helpful.

Homepage

As you can see the slideshow on the homepage (shown above) filters each archive and then theres an option to view all.  I find that this is a great way to combine what one would see in a Library integrated into the digital world.

After perusing a few archives I would say that it is somewhat user friendly, the speed of upload is slower, which can be frustrating, but the visual elements are great and the story map is one of the best I've experienced in comparison to other archives.  I think what I find that I enjoy the most is when looking at the online book archives (Jane Austen being my favorite!) it's nice to get the experience of turning the pages of the manuscripts with a visual element that makes it seem like the manuscript is in your hand and then having the archivist input their words on the left of the screen.  The experience of both the archivist handling the work, submitting the work, and then talking about it I feel adds to the digital humanities aspect.  Check out the Jane Austen and Leonardo da Vinci because they are wonderful!