Alexandria digital library: user evaluation studies and system design

Hill, Linda; Carver, Larry; Larsgaard, Mary Lynette; Dolin, Ron; Smith, Terence R.; Frew, James; Rae, Mary-Anna

doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(2000)51:3<246::aid-asi4>3.0.co;2-6

Cited by 41 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Hill et al (2000) described efforts made in user evaluations for an ongoing digital library project: the Alexandria Digital Library. During the system development period, three different user interfaces were developed and tested by user groups.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of interaction design in digital libraries on user interactions

Zhang

Liu

et al. 2008

Journal of Documentation

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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This study aims to investigate the effects of different search and browse features in digital libraries (DLs) on task interactions, and what features would lead to poor user experience. Design/methodology/approach -Three operational DLs: ACM, IEEE CS, and IEEE Xplore are used in this study. These three DLs present different features in their search and browsing designs. Two information-seeking tasks are constructed: one search task and one browsing task. An experiment was conducted in a usability laboratory. Data from 35 participants are collected on a set of measures for user interactions. Findings -The results demonstrate significant differences in many aspects of the user interactions between the three DLs. For both search and browse designs, the features that lead to poor user interactions are identified. Research limitations/implications -User interactions are affected by specific design features in DLs. Some of the design features may lead to poor user performance and should be improved. The study was limited mainly in the variety and the number of tasks used. Originality/value -The study provided empirical evidence to the effects of interaction design features in DLs on user interactions and performance. The results contribute to our knowledge about DL designs in general and about the three operational DLs in particular.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of interaction design in digital libraries on user interactions

Zhang

Liu

et al. 2008

Journal of Documentation

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“…Context-sensitive Help is the desirable approach, as suggested by Hill et al (2000) based on user requirements, for offering users opportunities to interact with IR systems when they need help, but context-sensitive Help has yet to be implemented in digital libraries. In addition, visualisation tools for searching, navigation, and browsing digital libraries are a new direction for Help design (Wan, 2006).…”

Section: Help Features In Digital Librariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hill et al (2000) tested the user interfaces of the Alexandria Digital Library through a series of studies and collected feedback from users regarding their interaction with the interfaces of the digital library, the problems of the interfaces, the requirements of system functionality, and the collection of the digital library. Based on these user evaluation studies, they found that users require the following Help functions: OIR 31,6 .…”

Section: Introduction and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Help features in digital libraries: types, formats, presentation styles, and problems

Xie

2007

Online Information Review

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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Help features in digital libraries and identify problems related to their design. Design/methodology/approach -This study selects six digital libraries to represent a variety of digital libraries developed or sponsored by different types of organisations. The Help features of these selected digital libraries are examined by their types (explicit versus implicit), formats (texts, images, screenshots, multimedia materials, and interactive formats), and presentation styles (descriptive, guided, procedural, and exemplary).Findings -This study presents the types of Help features available in the selected digital libraries, and further characterises the formats and presentation styles of these Help features. In the process of analysis, the author also identifies six types of problems: lack of standards; tradeoff between using explicit Help and implicit help; tradeoff between using general Help versus specific Help; lack of interactive Help features; lack of dynamic presentation styles; and lack of Help features for advanced users and users who do not understand English. Research limitations/implications -In order to design Help features that facilitate users to effectively use digital libraries, further research needs to extend studies to what types of help-seeking situations users generally encounter and the corresponding support they need. Originality/value -This study provides insightful information regarding the current status and problems of the Help features in existing digital libraries.

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“…Social aspects of digital libraries constitute an area of growing research interest [17,23,25,26,30,34,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. Much of the work in this area focuses on scholarly communication because the information-related behaviour of scholars has received more attention than that of other populations.…”

Section: Digital Libraries and Social Processes In Scholarly Communicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital libraries and the continuum of scholarly communication

Borgman

2000

Journal of Documentation

102

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This article explores the relationship between scholarly communication, an established research area receiving renewed interest, and digital libraries, a relatively new area of research. Scholarship is inherently a social process and it is embedded in a structure of relationships with other scholars, with scholarly societies, and with publishers and libraries. These stakeholders agree that the relationship has become unbalanced with the advent of electronic publishing, digital libraries, computer networks and associated changes in pricing, intellectual property policies and contracts, but they do not agree on solutions to redress the balance. Several problems worthy of research lie at the intersection of scholarly communication processes and digital libraries. These include the ability of digital libraries to support the cycle of information seeking, using and creating; the 'social life' of documents; and electronic publishing. Other interesting problems exist at the intersection of structures of scholarly communication and digital libraries. These include increased interdependency of scholarly documents, as links are embedded between documents, both within and between digital libraries; the indefinite preservation of digital documents; business models for electronic publishing and digital libraries; and conflicts between the physical and virtual aspects of libraries.

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Alexandria digital library: user evaluation studies and system design

Cited by 41 publications

References 5 publications

Effects of interaction design in digital libraries on user interactions

Effects of interaction design in digital libraries on user interactions

Help features in digital libraries: types, formats, presentation styles, and problems

Digital libraries and the continuum of scholarly communication

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