Int J Digit Libr (2004) 4: 69–70 / Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.1007/s00799-003-0070-8

Editorial

Usability of digital libraries

Ann Blandford1, George Buchanan2, Matt Jones2

1UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, Remax House, 31–32 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP, UK2Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand

Published online: 23 July 2004 – Springer-Verlag 2004

Keywords: User-centred design – Usability evaluation –Digital libraries – Use-in-context

1 Introduction

The issue of usability has concerned the digital libraries(DLs) community, at least peripherally, over many years.There is, after all, little point in delivering sophisticatedlibraries with novel features if those systems are then ig-nored by the intended users because they are too difficultto use or do not offer the key features that users require.However, the challenge of how to deliver DLs that aretruly useful and usable remains elusive, often given sec-ond place to solving novel technical challenges.This was the thinking behind our organisation of

a workshop on the topic of usability which was heldat JCDL’02 [1]. This collection of papers derives indi-rectly from that workshop. At the workshop, ten paperson different aspects of usability were presented, inter-spersed with extensive discussion on key issues arisingfrom those papers. Papers covered both practical issues,including empirical and analytical evaluations of existingsystems, and theoretical issues, for example, developingtaxonomies of aspects of digital library use. Following thissuccessful workshop, we put together the call for papersfor this special issue of JDL, soliciting papers from bothattendees at the workshop and others in the community.At this point, we brought in Matt Jones as a third editor,so that papers on which any of the editors were co-authorscould be dealt with by two editors with no involvement ofthe authoring editor.The circumstances in which DLs are being developed

vary widely – from those for the internal use of commer-cial organisations to academic institutions and publicbodies and services of all forms. Users may be predomin-

antly expert in electronic information seeking, or novices,or a diverse mix – domain experts seeking detailed spe-cialist knowledge, students approaching new and unfa-miliar subjects, or casual browserswith a passing interest.The papers in this special issue highlight the diversity ofcontext and user goals that researchers and developersneed to understand and accommodate. So, for example,there is a study of commercial image libraries (Parker)alongside others on medical user needs (Adams andBlandford) and systems for academics (Hartson et al.;Stelmaszewska and Blandford).The Web user experience has a significant impact

upon DL design and use. For example, there are trendstowards “Google-isation” of search (a modern day ana-logue, perhaps, to the “qwerty-isation” of keyboards):users seem to be unable to comprehend traditional,fielded, bibliographic querying, preferring simple key-word input and ranked list outputs. It is pleasing, then,to include a paper (Chen et al.) that involves an analysisof the Google, Altavista and Lycos directories, which arewidely-used Web information access structures.Over the past 40 years, the human computer interac-

tion field has developed a wide range of tools, techniques,models and methods aimed at ensuring that interactivesystems are designed in a user-centred way [2]. This col-lection of papers illustrates how the insights elicited, skillsrequired and time and resource costs incurred can varydepending on the approaches employed. For instance,Adams and Blandford conducted 98 in-depth interviewswith users to explore the social and organisational issuesof medical and academic DLs; in contrast, Hartson et al.used a small number of expert evaluators to critique theNCSTRL system, uncovering interface problems in theprocess.While many of the approaches – think-aloud, observa-

tion, interviews, focus groups, usability inspections, arte-fact analysis etc. – presented in the papers are qualita-

70 A. Blandford: Editorial

tive in nature, Chen et al. highlight the role quantitative,empirical methods can play. They present a laboratory-based, controlled experiment to investigate the relation-ship between a user’s approach to information seekingand the design of information access structures.Taken as a whole, this collection gives a flavour of the

challenges DL researchers and designers face when tryingto meet human needs, while at the same time presentingsound and varied approaches to user-centred progress. Itis our hope that the DL community will be encouragedto further research and employ usability methods. If thishappens, users will be saved from the frustrations, confu-sion and disappointment that characterise many of theirtechnological experiences today.

Acknowledgements. Organisation of the workshop from which thisspecial issue is derived was partly supported by EPSRC GrantGR/M81748 and funding from Middlesex University. We are grate-ful to everyone who helped with refereeing this special issue: WilmaAlexander, Davide Bolchini, Katy Borner, Sally-Jo Cunningham,Gary Marsden, Stefano Mizzaro, David Nichols, Andreas Rauber,Rudi Schmeide, Tamara Sumner, Yin Leng Theng.

References

1. Blandford A, Buchanan G (2002) Report on usability work-shop at JCDL’02. Available at: http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/annb/DLUsability/JCDL02.html

2. Shneiderman B (1998) Designing the user interface, 3rd edn.Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA