Transcript Proposition: Digital Collections Are Easier to Find and

Proposition: Digital Collections
Are Easier to Find and Use
through DLF Aquifer’s American
Social History Online
Katherine Kott, Aquifer Director
Library Assessment Conference
Seattle, WA
August 5, 2008
From planning to assessment:
methods and tools
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Background
Planning
Design
Development
Assessment
Project background: American
Social History Online
• To make distributed digital material easier
to find and use
• Designed for
– Teaching
– Learning
– Scholarship
• Web site and associated services
What’s the problem?
Too distributed
Overwhelming
Poor quality
Use and Users of Digital Resources by
Diane Harley Educause Quarterley,
November 4, 2007
The need for a more robust infrastructure for digital
scholarship in the humanities and social sciences
What’s the solution?
Number one goal in the Digital Library Federation
founding charter (1995)
The implementation of a distributed, open digital library
conforming to the overall theme [of America’s heritage
and culture] and accessible across the global Internet.
This library shall consist of collections -- expanding
over time in number and scope -- to be created from
the conversion to digital form of documents contained
in our and other libraries and archives, and from the
incorporation of holdings already in electronic form.
Enter DLF Aquifer
• Emergent distributed open digital library
initiative
• Named in 2003
• Organizational structure (director and
working groups) established 2005
– Created policies, schemas, best practices
– Services Working Group responsible for
keeping the focus on the “content consumer”
Contributions to the community
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Experiments
Models
Methods
Best practices
Surveyed DLF membership to determine what information
had been gathered
Leverage collaboration for service development
What services?
• Use cases derived from existing user studies
– CDL American West project
– DLF Scholars Panel
– Other reports cited in Institutional Survey Report
• Personas and tasks methodology from CDL
• Common business functions from Service Framework
• Clarified target audiences
– Faculty
– Graduate students
– Undergraduates
American Social History Online
• Funding from The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation
– Small development team
– Link to working groups—an Aquifer “instance”
– Emphasis on
• Designing and building for scholar
• Assessment
• Planning for sustainability
Agile development
• Build prototype based on planning and
design
• Involve graduate students, faculty and
librarians
– User stories
– Using the software
– Conference calls
• Incorporate ideas and re-release every 2-4
weeks
Products
• American Social History Online Web site
• Integration with Zotero
• Search engine optimization for improved
discovery
• Integration with Sakai
• Federated search to include commercial
content
Assessment
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Improving access for scholars
Stimulating new research questions
Supporting interdisciplinary study
Supporting cross regional research
Increasing digital collection use
Methods
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Interviews
Survey
Focus groups
Observation
Longitudinal study
Transaction log
analysis
Rapid prototyping & Formal
assessment
• User services
librarians unfamiliar
with agile methods—
confusing
• Rapid prototyping—
heuristic--creating the
framework
• Assessment—digging
into the details
Results
• Preliminary results to
be reported DLF Fall
Forum, November
2008
• Final results to be
reported DLF Spring
Forum, April 2009
Questions & Comments?
[email protected]
www.dlfaquifer.org