Usability for Digital Libraries

A workshop at JCDL'02

"It’s like being given a Rolls Royce and only being able to sound the horn"

This is the description of one user (a surgeon) when asked about her experience of digital libraries. Digital libraries have great potential to help people organise, access and share information in powerful ways. However, the cost for the user is a huge learning curve, and most existing libraries do not provide sufficient or appropriate feedback and guidance to users to enable them to acquire expertise appropriately rapidly and easily. This workshop will bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to share insights, methods and findings about usability and user acceptance of digital libraries.

Schedule

JCDL Workshop Prelude on July 17th

A workshop prelude that aims to facilitate the cross-fertilization of topics presented at four JCDL WSs will take place on July 17th, 5:30-7:30pm in the Hawthorne Room.

It features short overviews of the WS topics as well as talks, presentations, and demos of four workshops:

Document Search Interface Design
Usability of Digital Libraries
Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries
Digital Gazetteers: Integration into Distributed Digital Library Services

All JCDL attendees are welcome to participate.

The 15-minute presentation from the Usability workshop will be that by Dumas & Plenacoste, with (if possible) a demo.

Workshop, July 18th

The programme for the workshop is as follows.

All participants should note the slot for 'non-presenters' to give brief accounts of their experiences, for which some may wish to prepare.

9.00am	Introductions
9.30am	Stoeffler, Reed, Hagedorn "User study of multi-collection text retrieval"
9.50am	Jones, Sumner "Evaluation of NSDL"
10.10am	Hovater. Krot. Kiskis. Altman, Holland "Usability testing of virtual data center"
10.30am	Coffee & chat. If possible, demo of Dumas & Plenacoste (and anyone else who has one)
11:00am	Dumas, Plenacoste "Libraries: comparisons between real and virtual"
11.10am	Keith, Blandford, Fields, Theng "Claims Analysis for usability"
11.30am	Parker "Searching digital image libraries"
11.50am	Open presentations: others give brief (5 minute) presentations of their evaluation experiences
...	Working session: towards a framework for evaluation techniques
1:00pm	Lunch & discussion
2.15pm	Bishop, Bruce "Usability research as participative inquiry"
2.45pm	Stelmaszewska, Blandford "Patterns of interactions"
3.05pm	Kim "Model-based approach to usability evaluation"
3.25pm	Tea & chat
3.50pm	Sandusky "DL Attributes: Framing research and results"
4.10pm	Working session: extending the framework for evaluation techniques
5:00pm	Close

Workshop Chairs:

Ann Blandford, UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, UK.

George Buchanan, Interaction Design Centre, Middlesex University, London, UK.

Programme Committee

Christine Borgman, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Katy Börner, Indiana University, USA

Sally-Jo Cunningham, University of Waikato, New Zealand

Matt Jones, University of Waikato, New Zealand

Hanna Stelmaszewska, Middlesex University, London, UK

Tamara Sumner, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

Yin Leng Theng, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Harold Thimbleby, University College London, UK