Description
Book SynopsisThis landmark text captures a global cross-section of leading voices and provides a clear and coherent overview of the user studies domain and user issues in digital libraries.
As the information environment becomes increasingly electronic, digital libraries have proliferated, but the focus has often been on innovations in technology and not the user. Although user needs have become a popular concept, in practice the users are rarely consulted in the development of services. Research and analysis of users is essential to fine-tune the content and approach of digital libraries to the diverging requirements and expectations of incredibly varied communities and to ensure libraries are effective, accessible and sustainable in the long term.
Key topics include:
- what is the place of user studies in digital libraries and what are the basic user study methods?
- explaining user-centric studies, information behaviour and user experience studies
- exploring user-study methods such as surveys, questionnaires, expert evaluation methods, eye tracking, deep log analysis, personae and ethnographic studies
- critical issues around user studies such as evaluation of digital libraries, digital preservation, social media, the shift to mobile devices and ethics
- user studies in specific types of institutions: libraries, archives, museums, audiovisual collections and art collections
- the most popular questions and what to do next.
Readership: Information professionals involved in supporting, developing or designing digital library services, researchers wanting to address the user dimension in their work and students on LIS and computer science courses who want to understand the importance of the user in information services.
Trade Review"This book is a timely one...The chapters are written by highly competent researchers and professionals known in the digital libraries and user studies world. The research world meets the professionals, the mature and authoritative researchers are represented side by side with young ones just starting their career."
-- Information Research
"This is a publication I can wholeheartedly recommend to academics, researchers, students and practitioners. It is solidly embedded in the theory and literature of information behaviour and user studies. However, the text should not overwhelm practitioners who wish to enter the fascinating area of user studies research in the ever-expanding world of digital libraries."
-- Online Information Review
Table of ContentsPreface - Tom Wilson 1. Introduction: user studies for digital library development - Milena Dobreva, Andy O’Dwyer and Pierluigi Feliciati
PART 1: SETTING THE SCENE
2. Models that inform digital library design - Elaine G Toms 3. User-centric studies - Sudatta Chowdhury 4. Design issues and user needs - Petar Mihaylov 5. Users within the evaluation of digital libraries - Giannis Tsakonas
PART 2: METHODS EXPLAINED AND ILLUSTRATED
6. Questionnaires, interviews and focus groups as means for user engagement with evaluation of digital libraries - Jillian R Griffiths 7. Expert evaluation methods - Claus-Peter Klas 8. Evidence of user behaviour: deep log analysis - David Nicholas and David Clark 9. An eye-tracking approach to the evaluation of digital libraries - Panos Balatsoukas 10 Personas - Katja Guldbæk Rasmussen and Gitte Petersen
PART 3: USER STUDIES IN THE DIGITAL LIBRARY UNIVERSE: WHAT ELSE NEEDS TO BE CONSIDERED?
11. User-related issues in multilingual access to multimedia collections - Paul Clough 12. Children and digital libraries - Ian Ruthven, Monica Landoni and Andreas Lingnau 13. User engagement and social media - Jeffery K Guin 14. Significant others: user studies and digital preservation - Kathleen Menzies and Duncan Birrell 15. The shift to mobile devices - Lina Petrakieva 16. Resource discovery for research and course design - Zsuzsanna Varga 17. Support for users within an educational or e-learning context - Nicola OsbornePART 4: USER STUDIES ACROSS THE CULTURAL HERITAGE SECTOR
18. User studies in libraries - Derek Law 19. User studies in archives - Wendy M Duff 20. User studies in museums: holding the museum in the palm of your hand - Susan Hazan 21. Digital art online: perspectives on user needs, access, documentation and retrieval - Leo Konstantelos 22. User studies for digital libraries’ development: audiovisual collections - Andy O’Dwyer 23. A business-model perspective on end-users and open metadata - Harry Verwayen and Martijn Arnoldus
PART 5: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
24. And now … to the brave real world - Milena Dobreva, Andy O’Dwyer and Pierluigi Feliciati
