The alignment of user needs with the technical capabilities of modern digital libraries is an area attracting the interest of researchers and practitioners. Europeana, conceived with the intention of offering a single access point to European cultural heritage, has been developed in recent years with a continuous effort to identify and respond to the needs of a range of users. This paper presents a study of two user communitiesyoung people and the general public. The study, conducted between October 2009 and January 2010, comprised a series of focus groups and media labs in Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. A distinctive aspect of this study is that it combines questionnaire-based and verbal feedback gathered from users with evidence of user actions whilst undertaking a well-defined task. The paper presents the context and the methodology of the study, and some of the data gathered within the study which helps to understand better the attitude of digital natives towards specialised digital libraries. The data analysis supports several conclusions: specialised digital libraries require strong advocacy to target the "digital natives" 1 generation which tends to prefer general purpose search engines to specialised resources; young users are confident that they know how to use advanced search yet there is little evidence of their applying these skills in contrast to general public users; the perception of digital libraries differs in groups from different countries. The study contributes to the better understanding of some behavioural characteristics of users of digital libraries.

A series of detailed recommendations enumerate some of the ways in which they might begin to develop and support an interoperable systems landscape to the benefit of all key stakeholders.The project combined quantitative and qualitative research methods including an online questionnaire distributed to staff within 85 universities, desk research, and two case studies conducted at the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow.

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Eye-tracking data was gathered as part of a user and functional evaluation of the Europeana v1.0 prototype, to determine which areas of the interface screen are most heavily used and which areas attract users’ attention but are not effectively used in search. Outputs from eye-tracking data can offer insight into how advanced search functions can be made more intuitive for end users with differing interests and abilities, and can be used to inform continued interface development as digital libraries look to the future. Results led to recommendations for the future development of the Europeana digital library

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