ABSTRACT In 2015, the Louisville Underground Music Archive (LUMA) team published their approach to documenting the Louisville local music scene by combining documentation strategy with a community archives–influenced sensibility. In the ten years since “Saving All the Freaks on the Life Raft,” the LUMA project has received more collections, taught dozens of classes using the materials, participated in community events, and even had a pair of jeans named after it. This is also a point to reflect on LUMA's future. To help plan that path, the LUMA team turned to colleagues working on other punk music projects at similar institutions, including university archives and manuscript repositories, large public libraries, and major museums. This article provides a look at the literature since 2015, a report on LUMA's progress, and the results of conversations with similarly situated colleagues, ending with the identification of some overarching lessons learned. From this pool of data, the LUMA team observed that complex collecting projects can succeed without advisory boards, as long as the community connections and wisdom these boards offer exist in other forms; that it is not unusual for genre-focused music collecting projects to consider expanding their focus to other types of music; that work with creative communities can require changes to policies and deeds; and that staffing, and therefore sustainability, will likely always be an issue.
ABSTRACT Archives face unique challenges to implementing user experience (UX) research and design practices, including limited and contingent staffing, constrained budgets, complex systems, and lack of technology ownership. Drawing on a comparative analysis of existing corporate and library UX maturity models, recent survey and project data related to archival resourcing and systems challenges, and the author's experience as a UX practitioner, this article proposes the Archives UX Maturity Model: a new cyclical model supporting small, iterative interventions to assess and build UX capacity in archives. Its stages support organizations of varying sizes and capacities and act as a roadmap for integrating UX practices through a cycle of awareness, experimentation, collaboration and advocacy, and reflection and documentation. The article offers methods to support this model of incremental integration, including moderated usability testing, card sorting, tree testing, service blueprinting, and accessibility evaluations. By leveraging existing strengths like the agility of small teams and close user connections, archives can enhance user experience and embed care-centered approaches.
