Design Of Digital Libraries Research Articles

A Conceptual Framework for Digital Libraries for K–12 Mathematics Education: Part 1, Information Organization, Information Literacy, and Integrated Learning

This article is the first of two that present a six‐part conceptual framework for the design and evaluation of digital libraries meant to support mathematics education in K–12 settings (see also pt. 2). This first article concentrates on (1) information organization, (2) information literacy, and (3) integrated learning with multimedia materials. The second article reviews (4) adoption of new standards for mathematics education, (5) integration of pertinent changes in educational policy, and (6) ensuring pedagogic and political accountability. Each article concludes with specific recommendations for digital libraries meant to support K–12 mathematics education appropriate to the topics the article discusses. This framework, which may be of some use to researchers and educators in many settings and countries, emphasizes the importance of communication, community building, and learning activities that use different media for the design of digital functionalities and online collections of mathematics learning materials. The major goal of the framework described here is to consider how to bring the larger computationally intensive collections called digital libraries closer to the existing structures and practices of learners and teachers while recognizing the new functionalities and learning opportunities that digital libraries offer.

JCDL Workshop Report

As digital libraries (DLs) continue to mature into complex networked information and knowledge tools, and become accessible to ever more diverse groups of users, library implementation and use are emerging as important research problems. How might we understand the ways in which the current generation of DLs have been designed and are used in real-life contexts today, and how might we apply our understandings to future generations of DL design?

Imposing structures: Narrative analysis and the design of information systems

Understanding how designers of information and communication technologies conceptualize and perform their work can contribute to the larger goals of more effective design environments and more effective information systems. This article discusses the narrative analysis method in the context of a digital library design project related to environmental science and suggests that useful insights can be gained when both the design product and the design process are framed in narrative terms. When designers embraced the narrative aspects of the system, indicators of communication, information sharing, and integrative work increased. Narrative analysis supplemented social network analysis and demonstrated more explanatory power regarding the outcomes of the usability study and was an effective research method insofar as it mirrored the participants' evolving views of the design environment, suggesting that a reflexive approach to narrative data collection and analysis is warranted.

Influencing User Behavior through Digital Library Design

Influencing User Behavior through Digital Library Design

Comparing faculty information seeking in teaching and research: Implications for the design of digital libraries

ADEPT is a 5-year project whose goals are to develop, deploy, and evaluate inquiry learning capabilities for the Alexandria Digital Library, an extant digital library of primary sources in geograph...

Digital library services at the Indian Statistical Institute

PurposeAims to share the experience of the design of digital library in relation to digitise of database and making use of user community with a view to give an efficient library practice.Design/methodology/approachPresents a case study approach to the design of digital library service to provide insight in to the development of online resources.FindingsImportant services like online resource, online public access catalogue (OPAC), consortium and how these sources are helpful in building digital collection in Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore library are discussed.Practical implicationsIn a short period, considerable progress has been made in consortium project in the Indian Statistical Institute libraries. To meet the vision of the academic environment, the library has set up in place strategies that will enable it to provide new information services by which more users of the institution will benefit.Originality/valueGives an introduction to the digitations of the Indian Statistical Institute Library, Ban galore. Focuses on the key initiatives of the various databases.

Comparing faculty information seeking in teaching and research: Implications for the design of digital libraries

AbstractADEPT is a 5‐year project whose goals are to develop, deploy, and evaluate inquiry learning capabilities for the Alexandria Digital Library, an extant digital library of primary sources in geography. We interviewed nine geography faculty members who teach undergraduate courses about their information seeking for research and teaching and their use of information resources in teaching. These data were supplemented by interviews with four faculty members from another ADEPT study about the nature of knowledge in geography. Among our key findings are that geography faculty are more likely to encounter useful teaching resources while seeking research resources than vice versa, although the influence goes in both directions. Their greatest information needs are for research data, maps, and images. They desire better searching by concept or theme, in addition to searching by location and place name. They make extensive use of their own research resources in their teaching. Among the implications for functionality and architecture of geographic digital libraries for educational use are that personal digital libraries are essential, because individual faculty members have personalized approaches to selecting, collecting, and organizing teaching resources. Digital library services for research and teaching should include the ability to import content from common office software and to store content in standard formats that can be exported to other applications. Digital library services can facilitate sharing among faculty but cannot overcome barriers such as intellectual property rights, access to proprietary research data, or the desire of individuals to maintain control over their own resources. Faculty use of primary and secondary resources needs to be better understood if we are to design successful digital libraries for research and teaching.

Progress in the design and evaluation of digital libraries: Implications for research and education

Progress in the design and evaluation of digital libraries: Implications for research and education

The unseen and unacceptable face of digital libraries

The social and organisational aspects of digital libraries (DLs) are often overlooked, but this paper reviews how they can affect users’ awareness and acceptance of DLs. An analysis of research conducted within two contrasting domains (clinical and academic) is presented which highlights issues of user interactions, work practices and organisational social structures. The combined study comprises an analysis of 98 in-depth interviews and focus groups with lecturers, librarians and hospital clinicians. The importance of current and past roles of the library, and how users interacted with it, are revealed. Web-based DLs, while alleviating most library resource and interaction problems, require a change in librarians’ and DL designers’ roles and interaction patterns if they are to be implemented acceptably and effectively. Without this role change, users will at best be unaware of these digital resources and at worst feel threatened by them. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of DL design and implementation of the social context and supporting user communication (i.e., collaboration and consultation) in information searching and usage activities.

From physical to digital: a case study of computer scientists’ behaviour in physical libraries

There has been substantial research on various aspects of people’s usage of physical libraries but relatively little on their interaction with individual library artefacts; that is: books, journals, and papers. We have studied people’s behaviour when working in physical libraries, focusing particularly on how they interact with these artefacts, how they evaluate them, and how they interact with librarians. This study provides a better understanding of how people interact with paper information, from which we can draw implications for some requirements of the design of digital libraries, while recognising that the term ‘library’ is a metaphor when applied to electronic document collections. In particular, improved communication with other library users and with librarians could facilitate more rapid access to relevant information and support services, and structuring information presentation so that users can make rapid assessments of its relevance would improve the efficiency of many information searches.

Music information retrieval research and its context at the University of Waikato

AbstractThis article describes the digital music library work at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. At the heart of the project is a music information retrieval workbench for evaluating algorithms and performing experiments used in conjunction with four datasets of symbolic notation ranging from contemporary to classical pieces. The outcome of this experimentation is woven together with strands from our larger digital library project to form the Web‐based music digital library MELDEX (short for melody index). An overview of the workbench software architecture is given along with a description of how this fits the larger digital library design, followed by several examples of MELDEX in use.

Introduction to Digital Libraries

Producing a paperback capable of reaching pre-course reading lists is an unashamedly worthy pursuit. All parties concerned benefit. The publisher benefits from the ferocious demand, the academic bookseller rubs it's proverbial hands with glee as it experiences sales not dissimilar to that of a Harry Potter buying frenzy, and the author secures further academic kudos. More importantly, the student has in his or her possession the sure foundation of scholarly success: a handbook, of sorts, capable of shepherding them safely through those darkest corridors of university education and on to academic fruition. For those students studying information and library science, and in particular digital librarianship, such texts have been few and far between. The Electronic Library by Jennifer Rowley is arguably the only book to have challenged this anomaly with any degree of success and it remains a principal staple of many reading lists. However, neither current nor comprehensive, the passing of time has rendered the utility of Rowley's book to nominal proportions. The Chowdhury duo attempt to redress this student grievance and deliver Introduction to Digital Libraries, the remit of which is to provide 'a holistic view of the new digital library scene' and offer a comprehensive discussion of the current digital library design, development and management issues.

Dimensions of human‐work domain interaction: A preliminary analysis for the design of a corporate digital library

AbstractThe author applies the cognitive system engineering approach to investigate human‐work interaction at a corporate setting. This study reports the preliminary analysis of data collected from diary analysis and interview of 20 subjects. The results present the identification of three dimensions for each of four interactive activities involved in human‐work interaction and their relationships. An enhanced model and its implications for the development of a corporate digital library are further discussed.

Digital libraries across cultures

Digital libraries (DL) are increasingly broader in scope and reach, spanning geographical and cultural boundaries. Yet little research is available on the influence of culture as it pertains to the design and use of digital libraries. To address these considerations, a workshop was organized at Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2003, the aim of which was to bring together researchers and practitioners (twelve participants altogether) from a variety of disciplines to present current projects and contribute to a collaborative research agenda. The goals of the workshop were: 1) to increase awareness about the area of cross-cultural usability in the digital library community; 2) to identify new tools, techniques and methodologies for cross-cultural study of user behavior in DLs and international user interface design; 3) to provide a forum for generating new research directions and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The Design and Implementation of a Digital Library

The Design and Implementation of a Digital Library

The impact of digital libraries on cognitive processes: psychological issues of hypermedia

Digital library research has focused on the construction of large-scale databases that provide users with hypermedia search and examination tools. Digital library construction has resulted in impressive, albeit sometimes overwhelming content, in a multimedia environment. As such, research should turn to examining the role of the human processor in digital library experiences. Cognitive psychologists have examined the comprehension processes involved in human information processing, and critically, how information is stored in memory. These findings can be applied to issues inherent in the conceptualization and implementation of digital libraries. This article reviews relevant findings from cognitive research on text comprehension, memory, and spatial cognition with the aim of describing how these concepts apply to the design and functionality of digital libraries. Further, we describe ways in which interdisciplinary collaborations between cognitive psychology and digital library research will be mutually beneficial. Digital libraries can serve as rich test-beds for cognitive theories, while cognitive theories can inform design specifications for digital libraries.

Multiperspective digital libraries: The implications of constructionism for the development of digital libraries

AbstractThe article highlights the importance of conceptual and theoretical work in the design of information retrieval systems. Two epistemological positions leading to different solutions in digital library (DL) design are examined: the information transfer perspective and the social contructionist knowledge production perspective. The first section of the paper explores how the information transfer perspective affects the principles by which documents are organized in DLs. The second section analyzes the basic assumptions of the knowledge production perspective. The third section discusses how social constructionist ideas affect the design principles and information architecture of DLs. The authors suggest that, in the electronic information environment, traditional noun‐based approaches can be replaced by solutions that combine verbs and nouns to visualize the structure of conversations concerning a particular issue or topic. Finally, the potentials and problems of building constructionist digital libraries are discussed.

Assessing the Need for a Natural Resources Digital Library.

To guide the design, content, and development of a natural resources digital library, the Oregon State University Libraries commissioned a needs assessment. Interviews with citizens, policy makers, and scientists show that potential users want to quickly find, retrieve, integrate, and synthesize well organized and geo-referenced information on Oregon's natural resources, and they welcome the library's intent to develop such an information resource.

Realist Activity Theory for Digital Library Evaluation: Conceptual Framework and Case Study

A critical yet largely unexamined facet of digital library design and use is how library content is assembled and vetted, which in turn has profound implications for ongoing digital library usefulness and usability. This article presents a social realist evaluation framework for an activity theoretic case study of the Flora of North America digital library. Social realist evaluation is a relatively new evaluation paradigm, positing that outcomes follow from mechanisms acting in contingently configured contexts. Because this study focuses on the digital library content vetting process, a significant part of the present analysis concerns the publication subsystem of the Flora of North America digital library – Collaborative Publishing Services – and how problems related to its design and use facilitates our ability to explain the Flora of North America not only as a functioning digital library project, but as a contradiction-driven organizational form in expansive development. Activity theory is a philosophical and cross-disciplinary framework for studying different forms of human practices in a multi-level, stratified manner, developmentally in time and through space. This intensive case study of the Flora of North America digital library illustrates that while social realism, itself content-neutral mechanics of explanation, provides a i>real foundation for activity theoretic analyses of work and technology, activity theory supplies a conceptually and substantively rich vocabulary for explanatory reasoning about technologically mediated social practices, such as digital library assemblage and use.

Socially grounded user studies in digital library development

In order for public libraries to ameliorate the divide in their local communities, this paper presents a socially grounded and participative process for facilitating access to networked digital information for marginalized groups. Through the Afya Project, a participatory action research approach to digital library design is taken that targets the barriers in access to health information and services experienced by African American women in the community. SisterNet, a local grassroots social network of African American women committed to addressing physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual health issues, is a partner for the Afya Project. SisterNet has played a significant role in recruiting African American women as community action researchers to participate in data collection and analysis related to the development, implementation, and assessment of Web-based resources. Use scenarios in socially grounded user studies are being employed as a key methodological technique to design culturally appropriate and usable Web-based health information services that will help African American women in the community achieve their vision of better health.