Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop the indicator and scale for evaluating the service environments of archives and to assess the physical service environments of National Archives of Korea (NAK), and then to suggest the alternatives to improve the current service environments on the basis of the results of evaluation. To achieve the purpose, the study designed three research phases: first, to develop the indicator and scale to measure the current service environments by merging universal design indicators and various standards of NAK for establishing facilities and environments on the basis of the barrier-free authentication indicators; second, to evaluate the current service environments of NAK with the newly developed scale; finally to suggest alternatives to improve the current environments on the basis of the evaluation findings. The study found that current service environments of NAK have critical limits on the areas and facilities to provide direct archival information services to users such as reference service desks, showrooms, education rooms, seminar rooms, etc. On the basis of the results, the study suggested the alternatives and further studies for making barrier-free service environments of archives.