Masters Thesis/Project - Initial Thoughts - Family Historians and Archives

I'm on the downhill run of my Master in Information Management program. Two more coursework courses to go (one of which is the research methodology course) and the two "thesis" courses where it gets real. I'm currently in the initial stages of planning my research topic.

As is often the case, my problem is too many things I'd like to look into. The current list includes:

• Linked Open Data (LOD), RDF and what these mean for archival collections (I attended DH Downunder last year, it was awesome - waves at Terhi!)
• data visualisation (including GIS) and reuse
• technology/methods to make archival materials available for digital humanities/history
• identifying issues and breaking down the barriers between archives, academic, and community historians
• archival responsibilities/issues around materials collected from Indigenous peoples especially as they relate to reconciliation/investigative processes eg Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

In keeping with the need to tackle something that is actually achievable, I've been on the lookout for ways to narrow down my interests. A couple of days ago a message came across my Twitter feed. It was an article by Dr Laura King entitled "Family historians, collaboration and a new history from below methodology – or, sharing history over a cup of tea". The article describes a research project which brings together academic and family historians in an effort to develop new historical research methodologies. It builds on the earlier work of Dr Tanya Evans in "How do Family Historians Work with Memory?" and "Secrets and Lies: the Radical Potential of Family History". What jumped out at me was the following quote: "What this actually involved was creating a space for meeting up and talking about history."

While archives and archivists were mentioned in the article, it was only in passing but it brought into focus my earlier potential research topic of breaking down barriers/facilitating interaction for these two groups and archives. That is, the potential for archives to be not only be a mutual research destination, but also a physical nexus/collaboration space for academic and family historians. (And while out of scope for practical reasons, a follow on topic of whether or not provision of the this collaborative space could then be leveraged by archives to increase use of their collections by both groups)

The above seems to be a pretty broad topic, probably too much to be achieved in the time available for a Masters coursework thesis. So I'm thinking perhaps it needs to be narrowed to what sort of support do University archives provide to family historians. I haven't done any sort of lit review but I've seen a fair bit of work done on the support provided by archives to historians in the literature, so I confident that side is already covered (but I will check it to confirm). Focusing on the support provided to the family historians would fill that gap, while providing a foundation to build in the future for research on the broader theme of collaboration between the three groups.

So, what I've got so far:

Research Topic: How do University archives support family historians?
Who am I going to focus on? Family historians
What am I going to focus on? To determine if University archives provide specific support to family historians.  To identify what sort of support is offered Is there potential for archives as a collaboration space between the three groups? Can being a collaboration space for academic historians and family historians enhance/increase the use of archives?
Where am I going to focus? Australian University archives

I'm aware of the need to conduct this process within a methodological framework and I can see that is going to be the most challenging part of the process for me because of the nature of the questions I'm trying to answer.