Transcript HARMO-TEN

A project co-funded by the
European Union within the
eContentplus Programme
Users and Uses:
The MINERVAeC study and MICHAEL experience
Prof. Monika Hagedorn-Saupe / Maria Teresa Natale
2007-2008: MINERVA EC Working Group on
Quality, Accessibility and Usability
Coordinator
Germany in co-operation with Finland, Italy, Belgium, Czech Republic,
Greece,
Poland, Belgium, Slovenja, and Israel
In short
It is aimed to work on quality of cultural websites.
It exploits the work done in Minerva, and complements these products
with new publications and monitor relevant guidelines and promote best
practice related to websites.
The main target are the small institutions.
It organises “interactive” events, to assess websites and to grow the
awareness of quality and accessibility of websites among the cultural
institutions.
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2007-2008: MINERVA EC Working Group on
Quality, Accessibility and Usability
Objectives
•to support small cultural heritage institutions in increasing the accessibility to
their digital cultural heritage by sharing practises and techniques within the wider
community and interested public;
•to motivate cultural heritage institutions which are still reluctant to make their
already existing digital content available within the European digital library;
•to contribute to the mutual alignment of metadata sets and metadata use in the
cultural heritage sector in order to improve quality, accessibility and usability;
•to support guidelines and measurement tools that assist in the maintenance and
raising the quality of cultural heritage applications;
•to contribute to the organisation of tutorials to make users aware of open source
software tools that assist in improving the quality, accessibility and usability of
digital cultural heritage offers.
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Contents
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Directory of European and national rules
on Web Applications
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„Museo & Web”
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The new Handbook
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First evaluation of the MICHAEL-Portal
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Directory of European and national
rules
on Web Applications
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First release 2004
http://www.minervaeurope.org/publications/
qualitycriteria1_2draft/appendix4.htm
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Next release June 2006
Updating and addition of new Member States
national rules
edited by the Library of the Italian Senate
in collaboration with European Parliamentary
Libraries
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“Museo & Web”
The technical realisation of this model follows the guidelines of
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the Handbook for Quality in Cultural Web Sites
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the European principles for quality in a cultural Web site
Museo & Web is organised into four parts:
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Structure and Contents of the Prototypes, Tutorial,
Quality Control, CMS
Started
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Wider distribution of the “Museo & Web”-Tool
Beginning of translation of the interface, e.g. German,
Polish
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“CMS Museo & Web”
visualisation and administration
Open Source platform
English and Italian
administration interface
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Publications
In addition to dissemination and workshops a
major activity of WP5 is a new MINERVA
tool which will be presented in Lubiana on
6 June 2008 and made available in print
and online on the MINERVA website
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Handbook on cultural websites
user interaction
Postcards
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Handbook on cultural websites
user interaction
Targeted to all stakeholders working in the sector of
culture and concerned with web applications dealing
with:
Archives
Libraries
Museums
Cultural heritage diffused on the territory
Institutes for administration and safeguarding
Centres for research and education, Schools
Cultural projects
Temporary exhibitions
Portals
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Handbook on cultural websites
user interaction
Users: Who are they?
This is the definition in the MINERVA Handbook for quality in
cultural Web sites: improving quality for citizens (2003)
A user is a professional or not, specialist or not who
casually or with specific aims, occasionally or
systematically uses the Cultural Web Application. User
identity is extremely variable depending on cultural
profile, aspirations for cultural growth, professional
aims and even momentary curiosity.
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Handbook on cultural websites
user interaction
After 4 years, we can find different definitions for the Internet
user, for example:
- hybrid individual
- transceiver (transmitter + receiver)
- prosumer (producer + consumer = information recipient and provider
of its own contents
Different terms characterize the many user’s activities and
behaviours on the web:
·
user/ consumer / client / audience
·
surfer / player / clicker / downloader / streamer
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Handbook on cultural websites
user interaction
Non human users/agents: robots, spiders, crawlers
In this case users are not human individuals searching for or
providing documents and contents, but software agents charged
to search in the Web in order to index and store web pages.
This variety of definitions reflects an articulated offer of
contents and applications present in the new media
environment, which at the same time is:
1) Vehicle of information and communication
2) enciclopedic archive and tool of cultural training
3) entertainment and community interaction area
4) technological platform
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Handbook – Table of content
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1. Users and cultural contents on the
web: state of the art
1.1. Users and services in cultural web
applications: websites and portals
(including good practices)
1.2. Current trends in web services:
Web 2.0-3.0
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Handbook – Table of content
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2. Finding one’s way
2.1. Cultural subject types
2.2. Web applications types
2.3. Web applications life cycle
2.4. Users and Uses
2.5. Interactive and user side services
2.6. Audience measurement: Current
systems for evaluating user needs and
interactions
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Handbook – Table of content
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3. The importance of using tagging and metadata
4. Tools
4.1. A self-evaluation questionnaire for planning a
user-centred web application
4.2. Websites and portals feedback form
Appendixes
Study on users and usages of Michael-fr website
Study by Rinascimento digitale
EUROPEANA Questionnaire
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MINERVA EC WP5
Collection of good practices
on Web user interaction Campaign
Autumn 2007 all institutions and cultural web
professionals were invited to send to MINERVA
information on their cultural web applications
involving services and initiatives dedicated to user
interaction, such as questionnaries, wiki, panel
groups, focus groups, personas, contact centres,
folksonomies, etc.
Reporting campaign is closing in these days.
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Evaluation of the MICHAEL portal
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Evaluation of MICHAEL France
Evaluation of the European MICHAEL portal
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Evaluation of michael.fr in 2006
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Aims:
To get to know the users
of michael.fr
To find out more about
users wishes and needs
To test the websites
potentials
To reflect and to reform
the state of affairs
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Methods:
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Online questionnaire
(87 cases)
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Observation of cued
persons and semidirective interviews
(9 cases) afterwards
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Evaluation of michael.fr in 2006
Some results
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55% of the users answering the online-questionnaire
were non-professionals and were relayed to michael.fr
by culture.fr portal (touristical needs) or by sites primarily
specialising in genealogy (informations from archives)
Non-professionals were impressed by the wealth of
heritage shown by michael.fr and took the site for
exploration and access to digitised collections
Institutional users were especially interested in digital
projects of similarly institutions, the making off and the
state of affairs.
In their opinion the site is a good tool for promotion and
public relation of collections.
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Evaluation of michael.fr in 2006
Some more results
Both user groups were interested to search and to
have access to documents and works on michael.fr and
could image to use this site for research of thesis, articles
in journals and newspapers or to discover administrative
forms in digital format
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But more than a quarter of the cued persons wished
the site navigation to be improved because they
experienced difficulties.
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The evaluation of the search modes also should have
been thought over: 65% of the cued persons did not find
what they were looking for.
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But nearly 90% of the cued persons were statisfied
with the content of michael.fr and 80% of the cued
persons had a good impression of the graphic design.
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Evaluation of michael.fr in 2006
Conclusion of the results
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michael.fr attracts professionals as well as laymen, this is
important for public relations and for linking the site. This
information allows to undertake efforts to inform and to contact
new audiences.
There were some technical and graphical problems when the
users tried to do a search concening their personal interests, so
the usabilty need to be improved.
But on total the evaluation showed that the user were mostly
satisfied and the suggestions for improvement showed that the
survey was worth to be done.
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Evaluation of the MICHAEL European
portal and other national portals
Evaluation of the European portal will start after
the platform will run at full capacity
An online questionnaire is under preparation
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Thank you!
Prof. Monika Hagedorn-Saupe
[email protected]
Maria Teresa Natale
[email protected]
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