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5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 190 of 293

  • 2 - The design and architecture of digital libraries

    • By Hussein Suleman, Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 13-28

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Digital library systems (DLSs) are software systems that support the operation of a digital library. As software systems, they are designed primarily to meet the needs of the target community using current best practices in software design and architecture. Digital libraries, like other disciplines, assert a set of design constraints that then affect the architectural choices for these DLSs. Key constraints include: generality, usability by different communities, interoperability, extensibility, preservation and scalability. Individually, these constraints are not unique to DLSs, but together they provide a framework for the development of specific DL architectures.

    The DELOS Digital Library Manifesto (Candela et al., 2007) defines three actors in the architectural space of a DLS. The DLS is the software system that manages data and provides services to users. The Digital Library focuses on the collection, users, processes and services, with a DLS as one of its operational systems. Finally, the digital library management system (DLMS) is responsible for the management of the DLS, for example instantiation of collections and services.

    This chapter focuses on the DLS and, to a lesser degree, the DLMS. Core design considerations are first presented, followed by how these principles are realized in modern reusable and custom-built DLSs. The next section deals with how these individual systems are interconnected into larger, networked DLSs, exemplified by international projects such as the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). Scalability – how to deal with increasing volumes of data and increasing numbers of service requests – is then discussed. Finally, the chapter ends with a review of research directions and a case study of an architecture designed for the developing world.

    Core design considerations

    Core components

    Most DLSs contain three main components: a digital object store, a metadata store and a suite of services to manage and provide access to the other two components. These The data store and metadata store are typically implemented using a combination of file systems, databases, triple (data entities composed of subject–predicate–object) stores, etc. Services are provided by applications that execute both locally and via remote interfaces such as web-based interfaces. The exact mapping of services to applications varies across architectures. Typical services provided by a DLS include: search, browse, submit, annotate, manage, copy, authorize, import, export, link, filter and visualize (Gonçalves et al., 2004).

  • 4 - Information access

    • By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 47-68

  • Summary

    Introduction

    As discussed in Chapter 1, information access includes all the typical information retrieval processes and activities ranging from content and data selection, and processing and indexing, to search and retrieval, and use of information and data by a designated user community in order to meet their information requirements. Research in information access (information retrieval, to be precise) began in the 1950s and the emphasis in the early days was on building automated systems for indexing so as to facilitate retrieval of documents, rather than on the needs of users. Progress in information retrieval may be summarized as follows (Agosti, 2008; Chowdhury, 2010; Ruthven and Kelly, 2011):

  • • Stage 1 (from 1950s to mid-1970s): The focus was on document and text retrieval using small test collections, and the application areas included catalogue, bibliographic and full-text documents. The focus was more on designing retrieval systems than on users’ needs and usability. A large number of remote online databases appeared, providing search and retrieval of abstracts and some full-text documents of scholarly information resources such as journal and conference papers.

  • • Stage 2 (mid-1970s to mid-1980s): The focus was still on systems rather than on users, but retrieval systems became more sophisticated and more advanced systems were built both for managing unstructured text in databases and for structured library management operations. Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) and more online databases appeared, facilitating remote access to information, but the systems were centralized and the focus was still on text.

  • • Stage 3 (mid-1980s to mid-1990s): During this period ‘the attention of information management system researchers started to move from the collection of documents towards the user and the retrieval model, with the focus on the invention of models better able to support user–system interaction’ (Agosti, 2008, 4). Alternative models, especially natural language processing and knowledge-based retrieval models, as well as hypertext and network-based models, began to appear. There was also a major shift in research from systems to users and interactions, giving rise to various information seeking and retrieval models. This was also the early phase of digital library research, where the focus was on developing robust information retrieval models and systems that were capable of processing and retrieving large quantities of digital information of different kinds – text as well as multimedia.

  • 15 - Digital libraries and information access: research trends

    • By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 217-228

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Research and development in digital libraries (DLs) have progressed significantly over the past 20 or so years. A search on the Scopus database reveals a dramatic rise in the number of publications (articles, papers, reviews), from 436 publications between 1990 and 1999 to 7469 publications between 2000 and 2010 (Nguyen and Chowdhury, 2011). A number of reviews have been written to trace the developments and major areas of DL research. For example, Chowdhury and Chowdhury (1999) reviewed and classified DL research in the 1990s in the following major areas: collection development; development methodology and design issues; user interfaces; information organization; classification and indexing; resource discovery; metadata; access and file management; user studies; information retrieval; legal issues; social issues; evaluation of digital information; evaluation of DLs; standards; preservation; and implications for library managers.

    More recently, Pomerantz et al. (2006) studied a sample of 1064 DL publications covering the period 1995–2006 and suggested that DL research and work can be broadly grouped into 19 modules (core topics) around 69 related topics. Another review of DL research, conducted by Liew (2008), was based on 557 publications covering the period 1997–2007. These publications collectively centred around five themes (core topics) and 62 related subtopics. These two studies provided fundamental frameworks of DL core and subtopics, with Pomerantz et al. (2006) covering core computer science and library and information science topics and Liew (2008) covering the organizational and people issues of DL research.

    The most recent DL knowledge map proposed by Nguyen and Chowdhury (2011) includes 21 core topics and 1015 subtopics. In addition to the classic research topics in information and library science such as collection management, information organization, information retrieval, user studies, human–computer interactions and digital preservation, they noted several new research topics such as ontology and semantic retrieval, virtual technologies, mobile technology, the semantic web and social networking.

    As discussed in the literature (see for example, Nguyen and Chowdhury, 2011;

    Pomerantz et al., 2006; Liew, 2008) and in different chapters in this book, research and development activities in DLs are significantly influenced by several factors such as ICT developments, changes in the socio-political scenario, and new business models appearing within the information industry vis-à-vis new regulations (including copyright and access management regulations).

  • 5 - Collaborative search and retrieval in digital libraries

    • By Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 69-82

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Information retrieval may be considered as the quest for content relevant to a given information need. This is typically expressed by query terms submitted to a search engine. However, the performance of existing search engines has been shown to be far from users’ satisfaction in their precision and recall. For example, a search engine often returns thousands of results in response to a query, but the results contain information irrelevant to the user's information needs. This phenomenon can be attributed to a few causes. First, errors may be introduced during query formulation. Such errors may include lexical/spelling errors and syntactic errors in which the query is expressed in a form not compatible with the query language (Willson and Given, 2010). This could be because users are unfamiliar with the syntax and semantics associated with the particular search interface (Belkin, 2000). Second, users may not be able to adequately express their information needs as query terms. Here, there may be a disparity between users’ query terms that express their information needs and those used in the system to describe the information sources (Furnas et al., 1987). Additionally, users could fail to choose terms at a proper conceptual level to specify their information needs.

    Ensuring that information needs are met efficiently and effectively is critical, given the increasing popularity of social computing applications, which has empowered users to create and share content on the web. Such user-generated content may include text (e.g. blogs, wikis), multimedia (e.g. YouTube) and even organizational/navigational structures providing personalized access to web content (e.g. social tags). The result is that people have now come to depend more on the web in searching for information. However, the amount of information and its growth is a double-edged sword, due to the problem of information overload, leading to a situation where users are swamped with too much information, resulting in the difficulty of sifting through the materials in search of relevant content.

    Some may argue that the above problems may be less complex in digital libraries, especially when a collection is more focused and, typically, there are stakeholders who ensure the quality and the relevancy of the collection.

  • Foreword

  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    This collection of chapters on digital libraries complements other important new books in the Facet Publishing series on digital libraries, information access and data services. Digital libraries have matured over the 15+ years since the term was coined, yet the term ‘digital libraries’ has never come into general use outside a select group of conferences and journals. The research area is expanding, but not always under this term. Some digital libraries research has been subsumed under the rubric of cyberinfrastructure and e-research, other parts under webscience, and yet others under social informatics.

    The chapters presented here return to the debate I stoked about the difference between the (digital) library of the future and the future of (digital) libraries (Borgman, 1999). It is indeed time to ask whether a focus on technology has obscured the larger questions of social practice that surround digital libraries, or whether digital library research is at an inflection point, in a pivotal position to respond to the next wave of challenges for an information society.

    Chowdhury and Foo return to these early definitions and debates in their opening chapter, providing the necessary historical context to understand current issues. While framed as a book on digital libraries research, chapters range in style from the analytical to the tutorial. Some describe individual research projects and case studies; others synthesize the literature in specific areas. Collectively, the chapters span the scope of current research themes: user interfaces, architecture, equity, technology, organization, curation and social policy.

    An edited book on research issues has to balance currency and comprehensiveness, which the editors have done well. Most of the chapters are devoted to foundational matters such as technology and usability, avoiding coverage of breaking topics that may be outdated by the time the volume is in print. That said, they have introduced current issues such as crowdsourced data analytics, open access, intellectual property and scientific data policy. The latter is the focus of my own research, and even here they have framed the emerging concerns of data policy and practice (Borgman, 2012, forthcoming). The book closes with a projection of research trends in digital libraries.

  • 3 - Metadata and crowdsourced data for access and interaction in digital library user interfaces

    • By Ali Shiri, Associate Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, Dinesh Rathi, Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 29-46

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Metadata has remained a major area of research in information science for nearly two decades. The increasing number and variety of metadata formats and standards has given rise to a number of digital library projects and initiatives that have focused on semantic interoperability among various metadata formats and standards. Interoperability, like metadata, is a widely researched and discussed topic in the literature of digital libraries. However, this chapter does not discuss interoperability per se; rather, it focuses on the use of metadata in the search interfaces of digital libraries.

    With the widespread use of metadata in digital libraries as access and retrieval points, it seems logical that they be used in user interfaces to support information seeking strategies. Shiri (2008) reported a study of metadata-enhanced visual interfaces and found that visual interfaces enhanced with metadata are an emerging category of visual interfaces. The growing number of digital libraries that create, maintain and support a variety of metadata provide ample opportunity for designers and developers of user interfaces.

    This chapter evaluates and compares four digital library user interfaces from four different countries (Edmonton Public Library (EPL), Canada; Trove: National Library of Australia, Australia; the Ann Arbor District Library System, USA; and the British Library, UK) in order to identify new developments in the use of metadata and to explore the emerging trends and new features and functionalities, such as social tags, recommendations, reviews and ratings in digital library user interfaces.

    The next section of the chapter introduces the definition, types and standards of metadata, followed by an introduction to digital libraries and user interfaces. Then the chapter presents the methodology used in the evaluation of the user interfaces of these four digital libraries, the findings and related discussion. Finally, the concluding section highlights some key trends and makes suggestions for future research.

    Metadata: definition, types and standards

    Numerous definitions of the term ‘metadata’ have been proposed by various research and development communities, including library and information science, archives, museums, computing, information technology, government organizations and educational institutions. This trend in itself points to the importance, popularity, usefulness and utility of metadata in various contexts, domains and disciplines. They all share the same philosophy that metadata aims to bring order to digital information and to support consistent and coherent description and discovery of digital objects.

  • 8 - Users’ interactions with digital libraries

  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 113-128

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Over the past ten years, the spread and diversity of digital libraries has increased enormously. Not only are ‘traditional’ libraries extending the scope of their activities by creating digital libraries of one kind or another, but learned societies, interest groups and other organizations are creating digital libraries of specialized scope to serve the information needs of their intended user groups and of the public at large.

    The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of current trends in research on the interaction between users and digital libraries, to reveal the main results of that research and to explore the applicability of existing models of information behaviour to the digital library sphere. Generally, we have not sought to limit our definition of the digital library to a particular form, but have accepted what is described in the retrieved literature as a digital library. However, from the perspective of the information user, it seems reasonable to question why the term ‘library’ is used in this context.

    Methods and scope of this study

    If we perceive a library as nothing more than a room with books, then, by analogy, a file of electronic documents can be described as a ‘digital library’. The modern library, however, is much more than a room with books; it has associated services of various kinds, from reference services to interlibrary lending, and services directed to particular groups such as, in the public library sector, children's libraries and business libraries. Traditionally, special libraries in industry and beyond have offered translation and current-awareness services. Our proposition, therefore, is that the richer the array of services offered in the digital sphere, the more like a bricks-and-mortar library the digital library will be, and the richer the user experience of the library. The poorer the digital library is in these terms, the more like a repository or an archive it will be. One of the papers retrieved by the authors highlighted the difference between web archives and digital libraries, which provide more structured collections and enable the use of metadata, controlled vocabularies and authority files in the execution of searches.

  • 10 - Digital libraries and open access

    • By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 143-154

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Open access, defined simply as access to digital content free at the point of use, is a movement that began nearly two decades ago. It had its origins on the one hand in the exponential rise in the costs of scholarly information sources, especially journals, and on the other hand in the ease of publication and communication facilities that became available with the advent and proliferation of the internet and various new e-publishing models and standards. However, there is a bigger and altruistic reason behind the open access initiative. It has been driven by the need to provide better access to and sharing of information for research and scholarly activities. Open access facilitates research and scholarly activities in a number of ways, for example, by opening research and scholarly knowledge to all so that more researchers can access that knowledge build on it, thereby meeting another goal of less duplication of research efforts (JISC, 2011a). Open access benefits different stakeholders. Through open access:

  • • researchers can reach a greater audience and thus their research can be more widely read and cited

  • • institutions gain an enhanced reputation, and thus a better competitive edge, as their research becomes more visible

  • • funding agencies see a greater return on their investment because the research funded by them can reach more people

  • • publishers find that the impact of their journals increases as a result of greater access.

    • Thus, although the open access movement was initiated to find an alternative to the problems facing academic and scholarly communities due to the soaring price of journals, it does more social good by promoting better and easier access to knowledge for everyone, not necessarily the small group of people who are associated with relatively rich institutions. However,

    it a kind of second-class, cut-price publishing route. It is simply a means to make research results freely available online to the whole research community.

    (JISC, 2011b)

    This chapter discusses the issues of open access and institutional repositories in the context of open access digital libraries. It briefly introduces the concept of Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and institutional repositories.

  • 13 - Intellectual property and digital libraries

    • By Michael Fraser, Professor of Law and Director of the Communications Law Centre, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 179-192

  • Summary

    Introduction

    In recent years, there has been an increased use of the internet to search, gather and retrieve data and creative content. The shift to digital libraries has greatly impacted on the way people use physical libraries and the way libraries must collect, store and make information and content available to clients. After 20 years of journal subscriptionprice increases, the traditional commercial publishing model for academic research output is no longer financially sustainable on the same scale and new forms of scholarly communication and open access are becoming integral elements of library collection development activities (Rasmussen, 2009). Underlying these developments in digital libraries is the need to develop an economically sustainable library business model – as library budgets continue to be strained, particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis – while respecting and implementing the copyright entitlements of authors and publishers. This chapter proposes such a model.

    The Big Deals

    The introduction of publishers’ so-called ‘Big Deals’ (discussed in more detail later in this chapter) in the 1990s, where libraries throughout the world started forming multiple coalitions to negotiate purchases collectively with big publishers, was an initial attempt to adapt to the new world of online publishing (PCG – Publishers Communication Group, 2011). Under the Big Deal system, many university and research libraries combined in groups to buy a single ‘all-you-can eat’ subscription for a set fee and for a set period, most commonly three years (Poynder, 2011). The fees were, and still are, usually based on the cost of the member institutions’ historical print subscriptions. Under this system, universities started purchasing their subscriptions from large publishers in the form of bundled site licences, which allow electronic access to most of a publisher's subscription list at a price that depends on historical expenditure on print journals from that publisher. A publisher might supply a whole list for the price of the sum of the original print subscriptions of a library consortium, with an electronic premium added – generally in the range of between 5% and 15% – with a built-in percentage increase of around 6% per annum (Poynder, 2011). But while bundling electronic journals with print subscriptions provides researchers with extra access to journals, many librarians now find the long-term contract lock-ins inflexible. Elsevier, for one, provides a five-year package.

Digital Libraries and Information Access
  • Research Perspectives
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012
  • An authoritative and truly global exploration of current research in digital libraries. Internationally-renowned academics discuss what has been achieved with digital libraries and what we can expect in the future through the prism of research. The increasing number of digital libraries in all sectors and the pressure of ever demanding and diverse user needs has encouraged development of user-centred interfaces, intelligent search and retrieval capabilities, effective metadata description and contents organisation. In addition to the two editors who are renowned for their works in digital library research, this collection brings together established international names in the field such as Elena Maceviciute, Suliman Hawamdeh, Chris Yang, Stefan Gradmann, Michael Fraser, Tom Wilson and Ali Shiri to analyse these developments in relation to users and information access and the future trends and challenges that practitioners will face. Providing an invaluable resource for LIS students, academics and researchers interested in digital libraries and access, it is also a useful introduction to developments for those developing, managing or just starting out with digital libraries.

  • 14 - Digital preservation: interoperability ad modum

  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 193-216

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Digital preservation (DP) is defined as the set of activities which assure ‘interoperability with the future’ (Rusbridge at al., 2005, 1). It is a key aspect of digital libraries because, without it, future users will not be able to access the wide range of digital resources created and collected today. Not only does DP address the future, it is also a prerequisite for us today to access digital resources created in the past. From this point of view it would be more correct to define it as ‘interoperability over time’.

    But then one could ask, what makes digital preservation different from technical interoperability? Why should this be a separate domain in its own right? What is so special about the time dimension of interoperability that addressing it needs to be tackled as a separate research and development domain?

    Being defined as ‘the capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units’ (ISO/IEC 1993), interoperability is a major concern within the digital library domain in a technological environment where multiple hardware and software systems and standards co-exist, and where the number of metadata schemas available is measured not in dozens, but in hundreds. Gradmann (2008) suggests that it is a multidimensional concept that can be expressed through six vectors (functionality, people, technologies, interoperational entities, information objects and multilinguality) and four abstraction levels (technical, syntactic, semantic and functional), thus forming an interoperability matrix. Where does DP fit into this matrix, or does it extend the matrix? This chapter is about digital preservation research and argues that what makes it a domain in its own right is that its primary focus is on applying interoperability ad modum, or in other words, advancing towards solutions that guarantee that digital objects will be rendered and used at any future point in time in ways that do not differ from their original intended uses. We believe that in the future digital preservation information systems will be a natural part of the ‘fabric’ of digital objects’ entire lifecycle and not necessarily a separate activity, usually undertaken towards the end of that lifecycle.

  • 7 - Towards socially inclusive digital libraries

  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 97-112

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Many digital libraries (DLs) are designed to appeal to a much broader community than are physical libraries, and to provide an extension of the resources that are found inside physical libraries, thus transcending spatial limitations (Pomerantz and Marchionini, 2007). However, the potential of the DL to address the limitations of the physical library is only useful if, at the same time, access and usability issues can be addressed.

    At times, in the midst of reading about the recent innovation and developments of digital technologies and DLs, one gets the feeling that the current situation with digital initiatives appears to be that a big digital information party is being planned but somehow, in the excitement, someone is being left out. Joseph Licklider and Robert Taylor (1968) foresaw two of the challenges faced today: ‘In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face’ and ‘For the society, the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question, “Will, to be on line, be a privilege or a right?”’ (52).

    As digital information and technologies encroach further and into more areas of our life and endeavours, processes of social exclusion are reproduced in the digital realm. Digital technologies have no doubt revolutionized the lives of much of the world's population. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has been wholly positive. The implication of ICT for economies, locally, nationally or globally, can at times be divisive. The information divide is not limited to the ‘technology insiders’ and ‘technology outsiders’ of cyberspace (Floridi, 2001). Discussions regarding the accessibility of information and digital content have moved on from a focus on digital divide to a focus on social exclusion, which is a much more complex phenomenon.

    The concepts of social inclusion and social exclusion can be said to be the two ends of a continuum that relates to how much disadvantage an individual or group suffers in the society in which they live (Hayes, Gray and Edwards, 2009). Social exclusion is not always the result of an intentional act or of intentional policy.

  • 1 - Digital libraries and information access: introduction

    • By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Systematic research and development activities in digital libraries began just over 20 years ago, and during this short period of time the field of digital libraries has progressed significantly. Over the past two decades a large number of digital libraries have appeared in different countries that cover different subjects, and disciplines from health to science, engineering to arts and culture, and others. Likewise, digital libraries have been designed, developed and used by a wide range of user communities that include school children, academics, scholars, scientists and the general public. Different types of content have been created and stored in these digital library repositories, ranging from basic digital objects like photographs, music and film to more researchoriented scholarly, scientific and research data.

    Alongside this, a significant amount of resources and efforts have been invested in research into digital libraries that have given rise to over 8000 journal and conference papers and a large number of books, theses, research reports and other kinds of scholarly publications. Experts from a number of disciplines, like library and information science, computer science, engineering, psychology, business management, law, economics and others, have joined hands to address and resolve a variety of research issues and challenges associated with digital libraries.

    The field of digital libraries has evolved significantly over the past two decades, both in terms of the nature and characteristics of research and in terms of the objectives and functionalities of digital libraries. While the first phase of digital library research in the early 1990s put the focus on building technologies for management of large volumes of digital information for remote access, this focus subsequently shifted to users, usability and impact studies, open access and so on. Subsequently, with the rapid progress in web and social networking technologies, the focus of digital library research has been extended to new and upcoming challenges such as semantic access, social information retrieval and social network analysis (see for details, Theng et al., 2009; Borgman, 2007; Goh and Foo, 2007). Furthermore, digital library research that once focused primarily on content – books, journals, music, video etc. – is now being extended to managing research data as well as research output, i.e.

  • 12 - The usability of digital libraries

  • Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
  • Book:
    Digital Libraries and Information Access
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 September 2012, pp 167-178

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Simply stated, the term ‘usability’ means how easily a product or a service can be used. In the context of digital libraries, usability studies involve both user studies and evaluation of digital library products and services. A number of models of usability have been proposed in the literature. However, usability studies originated in, and have been largely conducted in the context of, the field of human–computer interactions (HCI). Hearst (2009) comments that usability is an important quality of a user interface. Nielsen (2003, 2006) comments that usability depends on five qualities of the interface of an information service: learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction. These parameters focus on measuring the features of user interfaces and are built on the design guidelines of user interfaces proposed by Shneiderman and Plaisant (2010).

    However, the usability of a digital library is not limited to its interface features; rather, it should focus on the overall digital library service. Kuniavsky (2003) suggests that there are four major steps in a usability study of information systems:

  • Define the users and their goals.

  • Create tasks that address these goals.

  • Select a group of study participants for the usability study.

  • Watch them try to perform the specified tasks using the service or product whose usability is being measured.

    • While these guidelines may be used for conducting usability studies of digital libraries, a number of challenges are involved here. This chapter addresses these issues and, drawing examples from several usability studies, it discusses different approaches and techniques for conducting usability studies of digital libraries. Some socio-economic issues affecting the usability of digital libraries, such as the digital divide and emerging business models, are also mentioned.

    Usability

    ISO 9241 Part 11 (1998) defines usability as the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. This definition reminds us that the users should be able to use an information product or service with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.

Page 190 of 293