Using an EAD Finding Aid: How hard is it?

Elizabeth Yakel has charged that EAD-based finding aids are difficult for the public to use. While the results of her study at the University of Pittsburgh seem damning, her study lacks scientific validity, since she does not compare success with EAD finding aids to success with non-EAD finding aids.

I lack the means to do a true scientific study, but I can share my own experiences.
My experience with EAD finding aids is that they have their limitations, but the experience one has with an EAD finding aid is a function of how detailed the finding aid itself.

For this exercise, I decided to experiment with several finding aids created by the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library on Michigan-issues.

http://bentley.umich.edu/EAD/

The search interface is very attractively designed. The interface allows one to search by "entire finding aid," names, places, subjects, call number, collection title, and repository. There are also simple and Boolean options.

For this exercise, I did a few experimental searches on subject.

I entered in the simple search field a few topics that I was certain would be covered in at least a few of these Michigan finding aids:

Detroit Riots
George Romney
Mesabi Range
Henry Ford

Simple Search

When I searched by subject, the Detroit Riots did not appear. Nor did "12th Street Riot" produce anything. Only when I searched by the entire finding aid did Detroit Riots hits come up. There were scores of Detroit Riots hits, so the inability of the finding aid to produce hits for "Detroit Riots" as a subject is possibly a weakness of EAD.

Aside from somehow not listing the Detroit Riots as a subject, using EAD was easy. George Romney hits came up when I used name and subject, Mesabi Range hits came up as a subject and a place, Henry Ford came up as a subject and a name. Curiously, there was only one hit for George Romney with either subject or name. Since he was an important governor, it seems difficult to believe that there would be only one collection that has materials relating to him.

Boolean Search

Boolean Search worked excellently. The interface was different from the standard Google/Yahoo interface in that it had separate cells for different terms, plus a dropdown menu for and/or/not, but it was intuitive. Detroit AND Riots produced relevant hits.

Overall, in my limited experience, I feel that criticisms of EAD for being difficult to use are mostly, but not completely, unfounded.