Cross-cultural usability for digital libraries

Abstract

The scope and reach of digital libraries (DL) is truly global, spanning geographical and cultural boundaries, yet few scholars have investigated the influence of culture as it pertains to the design and use of digital libraries. This workshop will examine cross-cultural issues around the use and development of DLs, especially as they relate to supporting cross-cultural usability of DLs. Aims and ObjectivesThe advent of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is said to have precipitated the blurring of geographical boundaries and made us into a 'global village.' Yet, few scholars have investigated the ways in which digital libraries have been used across cultures. Previous research on the use of online public access catalogs [1] and Internet search tools [2] have shown differences in how users from different cultural groups searched for information. These differences in behavior have implications for the usable design of DLs.Like any socio-technical system, a digital library embodies the values, beliefs and practices of its producers along with their broader social and cultural contexts. A user with different sets of beliefs and assumptions about the organization of the content, the categories assigned or the user interface design may find it hard to interact with the system. Lessons learned from cross-cultural usability and international user interface design are thus important for the design of DLs. Equally important is the study of the informationseeking behavior of users from various cultural groups.The goals of this workshop are: 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, and 3) to provide a forum for generating new research directions and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The format will be highly interactive. In addition to reviews of actual projects being undertaken, attendees will be asked to contribute real examples of successful (and/or poor) interfaces and website designs. The outcome of the workshop will be the establishment of a road map for this type of research, which includes the identification of key issues/questions around cross-cultural usability (e.g., user interface design guidelines, methodological considerations, etc.). All information will be posted on the workshop's website.Papers will be reviewed by a panel of experts consisting of: . Her research interests are social and community informatics. She teaches and is involved in cross-cultural and comparative studies, researching the influence of culture on the creation, access and use of information and its technologies.Anita Komlodi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Systems, UMBC. Her research interests are at the intersections of human-computer interaction and information retrieval (IR). She is especially interested in the design and usability of IR interfaces. She also researches the information-seekin...

Eucat

“…A user with different sets of beliefs and assumptions about the organization of the content, the categories assigned or the user interface design may find it hard to interact with the system. Lessons learned from cross-cultural usability and international user interface design are thus important for the design of usable NUCs (Caidi and Komlodi 2003).…”

“…The aim should be to enable the design of systems that cater to individual differences and various cognitive models. From a cross-cultural usability perspective, there is also a line of research that could look at the operationalization of culture for the purpose of enhancing usability as a means to assess whether culture is a significant variable in usability design (Caidi and Komlodi 2003). Research on the internationalization of industrial products, software or websites exists, along with an increasing interest in research on interface design for multicultural environments.…”