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- Description
- Table of Contents
- About the authors
- Reviews
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. User Studies For Digital Library Development focuses on the feedback that matters most when developing digital services: the library user's. Research and analysis of users is essential to fine-tune the content and approach of digital libraries, and this landmark guide by Milena Dobreva, Andy O'Dwyer, and Pierluigi Feliciati explores the place and methods of user studies in digital libraries and explains the different types of studies. Offering methods to ensure libraries are effective, accessible and sustainable in the long term, this book covers such key topics as
- The place of user studies in digital libraries
- Explaining user-centric studies, information behavior and user experience studies
- User-study methods, including surveys, questionnaires, expert evaluation methods, eye tracking, deep log analysis, personae and ethnographic studies
- Critical issues such as evaluation of digital libraries, digital preservation, social media, the shift to mobile devices, and ethics
- How user studies function in different types of institutions, from libraries, archives, and museums to audiovisual collections and art collections
- The future of user studies
This book is ideal for anyone involved in the development, design, or support of digital library services.
Preface - 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 Toms3. User-centric studies - Sudatta Chowdhury4. Design issues and user needs - Petar Mihaylov5. 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 Griffiths7. Expert evaluation methods - Claus-Peter Klas8. Evidence of user behaviour: deep log analysis - David Nicholas and David Clark9. An eye-tracking approach to the evaluation of digital libraries - Panos Balatsoukas10 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 Clough12. Children and digital libraries - Ian Ruthven, Monica Landoni and Andreas Lingnau13. User engagement and social media - Jeffery K Guin14. Significant others: user studies and digital preservation - Kathleen Menzies and Duncan Birrell15. The shift to mobile devices - Lina Petrakieva16. Resource discovery for research and course design - Zsuzsanna Varga17. Support for users within an educational or e-learning context - Nicola Osborne
PART 4: USER STUDIES ACROSS THE CULTURAL HERITAGE SECTOR
18. User studies in libraries - Derek Law19. User studies in archives - Wendy M Duff20. User studies in museums: holding the museum in the palm of your hand - Susan Hazan21. Digital art online: perspectives on user needs, access, documentation and retrieval - Leo Konstantelos22. User studies for digital libraries' development: audiovisual collections - Andy O'Dwyer23. 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
"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