Designing, implementing, and evaluating an educational digital library resource
| Date | 01 June 2003 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520310481427 |
| Pages | 160-168 |
| Published date | 01 June 2003 |
| Author | Ahmad Rafee Che Kassim,Thomas R. Kochtanek |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Designing,
implementing, and
evaluating an
educational digital
library resource
Ahmad Rafee Che Kassim and
Thomas R. Kochtanek
Introduction
Many of the digital library Web sites available
today on the World Wide Web (WWW) focus
on digital library research and projects, but do
not cater to the needs of beginning learners,
who need some guidance and a reference
framework to explore this complex domain.
In their survey of digital library education,
Saracevic and Dalbello (2001) state:
Education for digital libraries is a complex
proposition, in part because it involves so many
layers of technology and at the same time so
much that is new in creation, content,
representation, organisation, access, and use,
and in social, legal, and cultural issues.
Project i-DLR (Kochtanek et al., 2001a;
Kassim and Kochtanek, 2002), an interactive
digital library resource information system,
was initiated to address these educational
challenges. The result is a resource tool that
contains, among other things, selected
pointers to digital library resources available
on the World Wide Web (WWW), organised
using an educational framework suitable for
those new to the field of digital libraries
(Spinks and Cool, 1999).
Since the field is relatively new and
multidisciplinary in nature, and there is no
generally accepted definition of ``digital
library'', end users new to the field find it
challenging to begin the learning process.
Project i-DLR is designed to support users
new to the digital library field as they discover
ideas, explore current activities in the field,
and build up their knowledge base. The
resources included in i-DLR are organised
with that beginner in mind, and the Web site
provides links to various related sites. These
sites and their sources were carefully selected
based on their content in support of
beginning, intermediate and advanced users
interested in extending their level of
knowledge.
The history, design and development of
i-DLR were covered in Online Information
Review (Kochtanek et al., 2001b), the
National Online Conference in New York
(Kochtanek et al., 2001a) and the recent
JCDL 2002 Conference held in Portland
(Kassim and Kochtanek, 2002). This current
effort begins with an overview of the ongoing
The authors
Ahmad Rafee Che Kassim works at the Centre for
Technology Innovations in Education and
Thomas R. Kochtanek is Associate Professor at the
School of Information Science and Learning Technologies,
both at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia,
Missouri, USA.
Keywords
Digital libraries, User studies, Web sites,
Database creation, Transactional analysis
Abstract
This paper presents the current status in the development
of the ongoing project now known as Project i-DLR. The
content of this ``pointer site''includes resources pertaining
to digital libraries organised using an educational
framework for access. The paper describes the five-stage
evaluation of that educational digital library resource
(www.coe.missouri.edu/~rafee/idigital libraryR/
index.php). The focus of this particular effort is on the
continued development and refinement based on the
recent evaluations of this resource by end users seeking
to access digital library resources. The five evaluation
methods are presented and described, beginning with
focus group reviews, Web log analysis, database
transaction logs, a Web survey, and most recently, a
remote usability evaluation. As the resource continues to
grow in both breadth and depth, such analyses are critical
to continued refinement of the interface, the sources
themselves, and the manner in which they are organised
and presented.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
Refereed article received 18 March 2003
Approved for publication 24 March 2003
160
Online Information Review
Volume 27 .Number 3 .2003 .pp. 160-168
#MCB UP Limited .ISSN 1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520310481427
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