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Universities and colleges hold some of North America's richest collections of original documents. Their one-of-a-kind photographs, letters, scientific logbooks, and business ledgers, protected and presented by college and university archivists, provide the grist for historical research. Faculty members at these institutions access these resources when they teach students how to conduct original primary source research, as well as for their own projects. Faculty and students are thus key users of archives, and well-managed university archives are sensitive and responsive to their needs. But collecting user-centered data can be difficult for archivists who have many competing demands on their time and may not have expertise in conducting survey research.
The University of Michigan  has received $329,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop standardized survey instruments so that North American college and university archives can avoid duplication of effort and share the same survey and data collection tools. Leading archivists met in North Carolina in June, 2004 and reached an agreement that creation of such tools were an essential part of an effort to make the management of archives more data-driven.
The planned instruments will standardize data-collection procedures and definitions, and allow consolidation and analysis of data across institutions. Individual archives will be able to benchmark against their peers, which will help them improve their services, and prove their value to their parent institutions. The project benefits from recent strides in research on metrics development and testing in the research library and digital collection fields.
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