University archivists reported during the More Product, Less
Pixels session at the SAA Annual Meeting in 2008 that students were
frustrated when working with digital archival collections with no item
level description. In comparison to a physical folder which can be
opened up quickly and paged through, students felt that it was more
difficult to determine if the content of a folder was useful to them or
not. They complained about an “online microfilm experience.” (see
Session 49: More Product, Less Pixels: Alternate Approaches to
Digitization and Metadata, 2008. )