At least half had specific experience searching in OPACs. It is my judgment that very little content learning takes place in archives. This process happens over and over again with patrons of varying sophistication, experience, purpose, and expected outcome. The system interface must respond to what it learns about the person using it. Part of what a system needs to learn is the user's skill-level with the system itself, sensitivity to imprecise definition of terms, and facets of the concept of subject, such as time, place, action, participants, outcome, and type of evidence.
Structure is an important and intuitive navigational mechanism.
The human impulse to organize what they know and give names to that organization cannot be ignored. References Bearman, David. 1989. User Presentation in Archives. A User Study. Freeman, Elsie. 1984.