Evaluation Of Digital Libraries

Evaluation of Digital Libraries summarizes research and practice on both sides of the Atlantic and aims to answer the potential questions that both the theoretical and practical areas of digital library evaluation have posed during recent years. The book systematically presents aspects of participating communities, reasons and aims of evaluation, methodologies and metrics, and application paradigms. The book deals with practical and theoretical issues on digital libraries development and evaluation It will be multi-disciplinary due to its nature incorporating views and perspectives of various contributing fields Distinguished digital library researchers and practitioners present systematically methods, techniques and practices. The list of contributors include Maristella Agosti, David Bainbridge, Ann Blandford, Colleen Cook, Nicola Ferro, Brinley Franklin, Manolis Garoufallou, Sarah Giersch, Richard Hartley, Judy Jeng, Michael Khoo, Martha Kyrillidou, Yvonna Lincoln, David McArthur, Maria Monopoli, David Nicholas, Christos Papatheodorou, Terry Plum, Tefko Saracevic, Rania Siatri, Yin Leng Theng, Giannis Tsakonas and Lee Zia

It is no secret that the world of libraries has rapidly evolved into an environment which will soon be largely digitized. However, this digital shift has brought with it a unique set of challenges and issues for scholars and librarians to handle. Recent Developments in the Design, Construction, and Evaluation of Digital Libraries not only addresses the challenges with digital libraries, but it also describes the recent developments in the design, construction, and evaluation of these libraries in various environments. This cutting-edge resource compiles research from a wide array of specialists into a unified and comprehensive manner. Librarians, researchers, scholars, and professionals in this field will find the reference source beneficial in order to deepen their understanding of this continually growing field.

Discover Digital Libraries: Theory and Practice is a book that integrates both research and practice concerning digital library development, use, preservation, and evaluation. The combination of current research and practical guidelines is a unique strength of this book. The authors bring in-depth expertise on different digital library issues and synthesize theoretical and practical perspectives relevant to researchers, practitioners, and students. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the different approaches and tools for digital library development, including discussions of the social and legal issues associated with digital libraries. Readers will find current research and the best practices of digital libraries, providing both US and international perspectives on the development of digital libraries and their components, including collection, digitization, metadata, interface design, sustainability, preservation, retrieval, and evaluation of digital libraries. Offers an overview of digital libraries and the conceptual and practical understanding of digital libraries Presents the lifecycle of digital library design, use, preservation and evaluation, including collection development, digitization of static and multimedia resources, metadata, digital library development and interface design, digital information searching, digital preservation, and digital library evaluation Synthesizes current research and the best practices of digital libraries, providing both US and international perspectives on the development of digital libraries Introduces new developments in the area of digital libraries, such as large-scale digital libraries, social media applications in digital libraries, multilingual digital libraries, digital curation, linked data, rapid capture, guidelines for the digitization of multimedia resources Highlights the impact, challenges, suggestions for overcoming these challenges, and trends of present and future development of digital libraries Offers a comprehensive bibliography for each chapter

This is the second book based on the 5S (Societies, Scenarios, Spaces, Structures, Streams) approach to digital libraries (DLs). Leveraging the first volume, on Theoretical Foundations, we focus on the key issues of evaluation and integration. These cross-cutting issues serve as a bridge for those interested in DLs, connecting the introduction and formal discussion in the first book, with the coverage of key technologies in the third book, and of illustrative applications in the fourth book. These two topics have central importance in the DL field, allowing it to be treated scientifically as well as practically. In the scholarly world, we only really understand something if we know how to measure and evaluate it. In the Internet era of distributed information systems, we only can be practical at scale if we integrate across both systems and their associated content. Evaluation of DLs must take place atmultiple levels,so we can address the different entities and their associated measures. Thus, for digital objects, we assess accessibility, pertinence, preservability, relevance, significance, similarity, and timeliness. Other measures are specific to higher-level constructs like metadata, collections, catalogs, repositories, and services.We tie these together through a case study of the 5SQual tool, which we designed and implemented to perform an automatic quantitative evaluation of DLs. Thus, across the Information Life Cycle, we describe metrics and software useful to assess the quality of DLs, and demonstrate utility with regard to representative application areas: archaeology and education. Though integration has been a challenge since the earliest work on DLs, we provide the first comprehensive 5S-based formal description of the DL integration problem, cast in the context of related work. Since archaeology is a fundamentally distributed enterprise, we describe ETANADL, for integrating Near Eastern Archeology sites and information. Thus, we show how 5S-based modeling can lead to integrated services and content. While the first book adopts a minimalist and formal approach to DLs, and provides a systematic and functional method to design and implement DL exploring services, here we broaden to practical DLs with richer metamodels, demonstrating the power of 5S for integration and evaluation.

This report offers a survey of the methods that are being deployed at leading digital libraries to assess the use and usability of their online collections and services. Focusing on 24 Digital Library Federation member libraries, the study's author, Distinguished DLF Fellow Denise Troll Covey, conducted numerous interviews with library professionals who are engaged in assessment. The report describes the application, strengths, and weaknesses of assessment techniques that include surveys, focus groups, user protocols, and transaction log analysis. Covey's work is also an essential methodological guidebook. For each method that she covers, she is careful to supply a definition, explain why and how libraries use the method, what they do with the results, and what problems they encounter. The report includes an extensive bibliography on more detailed methodological information, and descriptions of assessment instruments that have proved particularly effective.

This excellent reference traces the construction and maintenance of the digital collections and services that have been available day in and day out to users worldwide for more than a decade. It examines applicable guidelines for any library looking to build and manage systems, conduct and evaluate projects, and scout new directions for mainstreaming and hybridizing the building of a digital library. Including contributions from seasoned experts in specializations such as staffing, collection development, and technology project management for digital libraries, Becoming a Digital Library discusses the techniques for finding and training the right people to build a digital library.