PhilSci+Archive

PhilSci Archive

Jessica Schad

**How is the archive portal designed? text-based? image-based?**

The archive portal is predominately text-based with only a few leaves as a design behind the "P" and "S" on the title page. I appreciate this because I am the type of learner that skips over the pictures, illustrations, and graphs in a book anyway. I see them as interruptions of the text and rarely useful.


 * What kind of use and users does it seem to invite? those who already know what they're looking for? those who are just exploring?

The homepage of the archive gives the following invitation and overview to visitors of this site:

Welcome to PhilSci Archive, an electronic archive for preprints in the philosophy of science. It is offered as a free service to the philosophy of science community. The goal of the Archive is to promote communication in the field by the rapid dissemination of new work. Authors who wish to post papers to the Archive should first consult the __[|Archive Policy]__.

This archive is designed for those who have a particular interest in the intersections of philosophy and science. As this intersection is vast, it is further separated to a greater degree specific areas of expertise or interest. After I clicked on "subject" I found various general categories that were relevant to my interests. From this page, I clicked on "Psychology/Psychiatry" first. Then I was given a list of various articles and books. Clicking on any of these gave me an insightful abstract of what the article or book has to offer. How easy is it to search the archive? how flexible are the search tools?

The archive though narrow in topic is very flexible and easy to search as long as you know the relevance on your topic and the general categories that your topic might participate in.

How structured or open is the archive interface? does it guide the user through the collection? does it offer few guided paths for the user?

It does guide the user starting with a general subject. The subjects are broad categories that then link to more specific areas of interest. Common sense and an inquiring mind is all one needs to navigate their way around this archive. **