Moving Image Collection Evaluation

Abbas, J., Norris, C. & Soloway, E. (2002). Middle school children's use of the ARTEMIS Digital Library. Proceedings of the Second ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Portland, Oregon, July 13-17, 2002, 98-105.

Through five months Log analysis of six grade classes' use of the scaffolds of the ARTEMIS Digital Library from 32 schools mainly from the US, the authors found that 1. The use of the scaffolds varied among different classes. 2. There was no correlation between scaffold use and student achievement; 3. The student groups experienced difficulty in choosing search terms and did not use proper system functions to focus their search. 4.There was very little variety in the terms use to search form same or similar concepts.

Adams A, & Blandford, A. (2001). Digital libraries in a clinical setting: friend or foe? Research and advanced technology for digital libraries: Proceedings of 5th European conference, ECDL 2001, Darmstadt, Germany, September 4-9, 2001, 214-224.

The paper examines the social and organizational impacts of digital libraries on clinical users. The results from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews reveals that DL uses are associated with organizational, social and political structures. In addition, organizational hierarchies, technological misconceptions, technology and information accessibility impeded the use of digital libraries.

Baldonado, M.Q.W. (2000). A user-centered interface for information exploration in a heterogeneous digital library. Journal of American Society for Information Science, 51(3): 297-310.

Small number of users from Stanford University were asked to compare heterogeneous result representation techniques, such as clustering strategies (no-group; group by authors; group by Web sites, free switch among the three). The main findings showed that result clustering strategies had an important and discernible effect on users' browsing behavior (e.g. users tended to browse larger bundles first), and the majority of users did take advantage of structure-based actions. However, the users varied in the degree of understanding the underlying structure-based searching/filtering techniques

Bishop, A.P. (1999). Making digital libraries go: comparing use across genres. Proceedings of the Fifth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, 94-103.

The author compared information use across two different arenas in life: academic (the Digital Library Initiative) & low-income community (the Community Networking Initiative). She found that digital library use is an assemblage activity associated with social practice, beliefs and goals, community norms, knowledge, technology access and proficiency, resource constraints, and the interplay between them. New users not only need to learn how to use IR system functions, but also figure out how to make the system fuse into their daily life. Trivial barriers might be magnified and cut off use at large scale and the primacy of comfort and relevant content can encourage use. The author also found that informal social networks provide help related to systems.

Bishop, A.P., Neumann, L.J., Star, S.L., Merkel, C., Ignacia, E., & Sandusky, R.J. (2000). Digital libraries: situating use in changing information infrastructure. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(4): 394-413.

The authors used multiple research methods to examine the use of DeLIver at Univ. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. They found that the frequency of use differed individually. The majority of users preferred search, whereas browse function still be used by a small amount users. They also found that the users usually adopted default search function and seldom use online help and other advanced functions. The usefulness of the digital library varied among professors, graduate students and undergraduate students.

Biship, A.P., Van House, A.A., & Buttenfield, B.P. (2003). Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation. Massachusettes, Cambridge: The MIT Press.

The book provides rich and in-depth arguments and evidences about DLs as socio-technical systems, which is composed of technology, information, carriers of information, people, and their practice. "It is about digital libraries' interaction with the larger world of work, institutions, knowledge, and society, as well as with the production of knowledge." (p.1)

Blandford, A. & Buchanan, G. (2002). Workshop report: Usability of Digital Libraries @ JCDL'02, ACM SIGIR Forum, 36(2): 83-89.

The authors summarize usability related issues from Digital Libraries @ JCDL'02. The HIB related results include: (1) many users simply do not understand the role and purpose of different metadata fields. (2) Users don't use systems as expected. (3) Students have poor information handling skills.

Blocks, D., Binding, C., & Cunliffe, D. et al. (2002). Qualitative evaluation of thesaurus-based retrieval. Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: Proceedings of the Second European Conference, ECDL'2002, September 16-18, 2002, Paris, France. 346-361.

The evaluation of the FACET project with the collection of the National Museum of Science and Industry in UK reveals that the non-expert searchers generally had proble with understanding how to construct queries and when to use the thesaurus.

Borgman, C.L. Leazer, G.H., & Gilliland-Swetland, A. et al. (2004). How geography professors select materials for classroom lectures: Implication for the design of digital libraries. Proceedings of the 2004 Joint ACM/IEEE Conference on Digital Libraries, 179-185.

This is a HIB research aiming to "have close understanding of process by which faculty search for and use information in support of their teaching." For the research objective, the authors conducted an interview with nine professors of physical geography and human geographers. The main findings include that (1) these geography professors are very active in information seeking; (2) there are significant differences between the two groups of informants (e.g. physical geographer and human geographer); (3) For a given professor, information seeking for research tends to have more influences on that for teaching than vice versa; (4) the professors usually own their personal collections accumulated overtime, and (5) They show interested in teaching resources created by their fellows. Although these findings are not gained in DL settings, they are suggestive to DL (e.g. ADPEP) design.

Borgman, C.L., Gilliland-Swetland, A.J. (2000). Evaluating digital libraries for teaching and learning in undergraduate education: a case study of the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype (ADEPT). Library Trends, 49 (2): 228-250.

The ethnographic observation of undergraduate class ADEPT use and behavior showed that the use of the digital library needed extra learning effort for both instructors and students. Whereas instructors were generally enthusiastic about the system because the new technology made images more vivid, the information presented in the ADEPT prototype sometimes led to overload to students.

Borgman, C.L., Leazer, G.H., et al. (2001). Iterative design and evaluation of a geographic digital library for university students: a case study of the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype (ADEPT). Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, Darmstadt, Germany. Retrieved April 1, 2003, from http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/adept/pubs/ecdl.html

The formative evalation of the iterative desing of ADEPT shows that instructors vary widely in their use of technologies. "While students and instructors are generally enthusiastic about the ADEPT, they have concerns about the effort required and the effectiveness of computer-based technologies in the classroom." (conclusion section)

Carter, D., & Janes, J. (2001). Unobtrusive data analysis of digital reference questions and service at the Internet Public Library: and exploratory study. Library Trends, 49 (2): 251-265.

The transaction analysis of digital reference service at the Internet Public Library demonstrated that users had difficulty in assigning subject categories to their questions and determining where the answers were factual or require sources for assistance

Cherry, J.M. & Duff, W.M. (2002). Studying digital library users over time: a follow-up survey of Early Canadiana Online. Proceedings of the Sixfth European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 13-24.

The authors employed online surveys to examine the use of Early Canadian Material in digital format. The research findings showed that there were significant differences between teachers/researchers and other respondents. Whereas the former tended to find the site by personal referral, the latter were more likely to pursue it by surfing the Web. Moreover, the former used the site on more frequent basis. While viewing the online materials, the majority of respondents used the table of contents.

Cunningham, S.J. (2002). What people do when they look for music: implications for design of a music digital library. Digital libraries: people, knowledge, and technology: Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries, ICADL 2002, Singapore, December 11-14, 2002 177-178.

Having noticed that "there is a dearth of priori research on information behavior as regards to music," the author employed observations and semi-structured interviews to see how music shoppers search/browse for music and the reason behind the behavior. The author found that people usually conduct known-item search (i.e. looking for specific item based on known features, such as primary artist/group name, album name, and song title). Additionally, the shoppers also may search by humming and browse by genre.

Dorward, J., Reinke, D. & Recker, M. (2002). An evaluation model for a digital library service tool. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Library, 322-323.

This paper summarizes a series of educational evaluation activities for a NSF educational DL project-Instructional Architech (IA), which enables users to discover, select, reuse, sequence, and annotate digital learning objects. The HIB related findings include : (1) the teachers were unclear about the concept of the IA in terms of how their efforts could be used in instruction; (2) they were easily frustrated if accessed learning objects or software functionality did not meet their immediate needs); (3) with minor improvement of functionality, elementary and middle-level student can easily use IA.

Duff, W.M. & Cherry, J.M. (2000). Use of historical documents in a digital world: comparisons with original materials and microfiche. Information Research, 6(1), Retrieved April 1, 2003, from http://informationr.net/ir/

The authors compared the use of Early Canadian Material in paper, microfiche and digital formats. They found that users tended to use more full-text search capacity but less table of content function in the digital context. While using digital formats, these users preferred downloading PDF files, highlighting the search terms in the results, and using fulltext search function as the default.

Entlich, R., Garson, L., Lesk, M., & Normore, L. et al. (1996). Testing a digital library: user response to the CORE project. Library Hi Tech, 14 (4): 99-118.

The paper focuses on (expectation, perception and usage) to CORE (The Chemical Online Retrieval Experiment) aiming to project scholarly journals in e-format. The results show that about 47% recursive (repeat) users. Other data analysis on CORE usage include article viewing, printing, reading habit, searching, and so forth.

Finholt, T.A. & Brooks, J.M. (1997). Collaboratory for research on electronic work. Analysis of JSTOR: the impact on scholarly practice of access to on-line journal archives. ARL Conference on Scholarly Communication and Technology, Retrieved April 1, 2003, from http://www.arl.org/scomm/scat/finholt.html

The survey of 160 historians and economists from the Univ. of Michigan and other five liberal arts colleges showed the frequency of adopting JSTOR is positively related to being male, having a preference for photocopying journal articles, relying on abstracts when reading journals, and the frequency of searching OPAC. The tendency of substituting online journals varied by disciplines.

Fuhr N., Klas, C.P., Schaefer, A. & Mutschke, P. (2002). DAFFODIL: an integrated desktop for supporting high-level search activities in federated digital libraries. Research and advanced technology for digital libraries: Proceedings of 6th European conference, ECDL 2002, Paris, France, September 16-18, 2002, 597-612.

DAFFODIL (Distributed Agents for user-friendly Access of Digital Libraries) is a federated DL system that offers a rich set of functions across a heterogeneous set of DLs. The findings include: (1) irritation due to long waiting times, unsure about the cause of empty results; (2) need of assistance in employing new concepts (e.g. author network browser); (3) difficulty of interpreting and making relevance judgement due to less precise and very large result sets.

Gorman, P., Lavelle, M, & Delcambre, L, et al. (2002). Following experts at work in their own information spaces: using observational methods to develop tools for the digital library. Journal of American Society for Information Science & Technology, 53(14): 1245-1250.

The authors employed multiple methods to investigate expert clinicians' use of medical records to solve clinical problems. They found that these clinicians invested considerable time, attention, and expertise in selecting relevant documents. While searching, they frequently perform informal note-taking and annotation. These clinicians also showed interests in other physicians' selection of documents

Greenberg, J., Bullard, K.A., & James, M.L. et al. (2002). Student comprehension of classification applications in a science education digital library. Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference, ECDL'02, September 16-18, 2002, Paris, France. 560-567.

To explore whether children may have same comprehension of scientific classification in educational digital libraries as in traditional libraries, the authors conduct an experiment to compare six-grade students' understanding of botany classification scheme in UNC's Plant Information Center (PIC) and physical library (e.g. use of encyclopedia). The main findings are whereas the classification tasks were successfully completed in both settings, the understanding of classification structures in the digital setting seems to diminish compared with the understanding for physical environment.

Hill, L.L., Carver, L. et al. (2000). Alexandria Digital Library: user evaluation studies and system design. Journal of American Society for Information Science, 51 (3): 246-259.

Two interactive modes between users and reference staff were found. One is the user posed a question and the staff explored and recommended appropriate resources. Another is the user guide the reference interview, tapping the knowledge the staff needed. Two domains of knowledge, namely task and system, were identified associated with the modes. Moreover, the authors also found that the users overwhelmed by the number of available query choices and frustrated by the language used on the interface easily misinterpreted or not understood. Nevertheless, the scientists still expected more domain specific search fields, such as scale and resolution parameters, to focus their search.

Hill, L.L., Dolin, R., et al. (1997). User evaluation: summary of the methodologies and results for the Alexander Digital Library, University of California at Santa Barbara. In C. Schwartz et. (Eds.) Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of American Society for Information Science , Washington DC, November 1997, Retrieved April 1, 2003, from http://www.asis.org/annual-97/alexia.htm.

 Multiple methods were used to examine user reactions to the ADL interface, and the functionality and content of ADL. The results show that users were likely to lack the knowledge and skills needed to use the ADL successfully. The majoriy of users had inadequate understanding regarding what ADL was trying to.

Hollmann, J., Ardo, A. & Stenstrom, P. (2002). Empirical observations regarding predictability in user access-behavior in a distributed digital library system. Proceedings of the International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium,

The authors conducted 1-year log analysis to examine the effectiveness of prefetetching and preloading employed by DTV's Article Database Service at Technical University of Denmark. They found that the majority of initial search queries were not precise enough to generate a good hit. Also, once a literature search had been narrowed to up to ten articles, there was high likelihood that some of them will be eventually downloaded.

Huxley, L. (2002). Renardus: following the Fox from project to service. Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: Proceedings of the Second European Conference, ECDL'2002, September 16-18, 2002, Paris, France. 218-229.

Renardus is a collaborative pan-European project, which provides "a single, multilingual user interface for cross-searching and cross-browsing distributed metadata collections held by 12 participating subject gateways." The multilingual survey results show that the users outside LIS domain tended to feel difficult to understand the order of metadata element display.

Jones, S., Cunningham, S.J. & NcNab, R. et al. (2000). A transaction log analysis of a digital library. International Journal of Digital Libraries, 3: 152-169.

The authors conducted 61 weeks log analysis of using Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of New Zealand Digital Library by international users (mostly from educational areas). They found users rarely amended default settings for either query or result display options. Their queries tended to be short and simple (average terms per query is 2.43). For Boolean search, the majority searches use no operator at all. Meanwhile, the users had difficulty with forming queries, finding sub-collections, and using system features. The authors also found users tended to use common terms for searching. There were a substantial portion of users visit rather than search. The query refinement was found to be common activity but occurred in small incremental steps by adding a new term or altering the existing terms. The majority of queries (64.2%) did not lead to viewing document content. When viewing documents, users tended to view first out of 50 documents per page.

Kantor, P., Summerfield, M., & Mandel, C. (2000). The Columbia University Evaluation Study of Online Book Use: 1995 - 1999. Proceedings of the Economics and Usage of Digital Library Collections,Retrieved April 1, 2003, from http://www.si.umich.edu/PEAK-2000/kantor-paper.pdf

The authors conducted a longitudinal study of use of online scholarly monographs (Columbia Online Books Project). Several patterns of viewing online books were identified. The pattern of use varied by the type of book (textbook, tradebook, scholarly book). The authors also found that digitized books received about three times the use of their print counterparts.

Kelly, D. & Cool, C. (2002). The effects of topic familiarity on information search behavior. Proceedings of the Second ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Portland, Oregon, July 13-17, 2002, 74-75.

The authors conducted a secondary data analysis of TREC-8 Interactive Track focusing on the examination of the relationship between topic familiarity and information seeking behavior. Their research findings showed that the familiarity with topics is negatively associated with reading time and positively related to the ratio of the number of saved documents over the total number of viewed documents.

Khalil, M.A. & Jayatilleke, R. (2000). Digital libraries: their usage from the end user point of view. Proceedings of the Twenty-first National Online Meeting, 179-187.

The authors conducted an online survey through a number of listservs world wide. They found that respondents used more than one mode to access online resource and multiple methods of downloading resources from digital libraries.

Khoo, M., Devaul, H., & Sumner, T. (2002). Functional requirements for online tools to support community-led collections building. Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference, ECDL'02, September 16-18, 2002, Paris, France. 190-203.

"The Digital Water Education Library collection is being generated by primary and secondary school teachers in the United States." It is essentially comprised of two system functions, namely online cataloguing tool and WebCT for intragroup communication. As a formative evaluation work, ethnographic analyses were conducted to investigate how well the community members understand the system function and what other functions they need. The data collection includes transcriptions of videotapes of three days of DWEL meetings, analysis of one year of DWEL documentation, and interviews with DLESE staff responsible for overseeing various aspects of DWEL project workflow. The findings suggest that DWEL members often did not distinguish between the two functions, and both were perceived to enable somewhat similar functions. WebCT in particular was seen as the means of manage cataloguing workflow.

Kilker, J. & Gay, G. (1998). The social construction of a digital library: a case study examining implication for evaluation. Information Technology and Libraries,17(2): 60-70.

The authors conducted a user studies of evaluating the Making of America DL prototype developed by Cornell University and the University of Michigan. The research findings show that the use preference on systems, particularly on interfaces varied among faculty, library staff, and students.

Mahouri, M. & Cunningham, S.J. (2001). Search behavior in a research-oriented digital library. Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 13-24.

The authors conducted a transaction log analysis of ResearchIndex (RI) over 6 months to examine query construction and search session behavior. They found that the large part of users were from the educational domain. The users preferred relatively brief queries (fewer than 3 words), and relatively short search sessions. They also found that the RI search refinement hint about the use of the proximity operator was highly effective (used in one-eighth of the queries). Users tended to explicitely change the default citation search to a document type search. The results were also compared with those from other two digital libraries.

Mandel, C.A., Summerfield, M.C. & Kantor, P. (1997). Online books at Columbia: measurement and early results on use, satisfaction, and effect. ARL Conference on Scholarly Communication and Technology,Retrievd March 21, 2003, from http://www.arl.org/scomm/scat/summerfield7.html

The online and in-class survey on the use of CNet and CWeb at Columbia University showed only a few students preferred reading directly online. Students with easy access to a computer spent more time using online resources (books and papers)

Marchionini, G., Plaisant, C., & Komlodi, A. (2003). The people in digital libraries: multifaceted approaches to assessing needs and impact. In Ann P. Biship et al. (ed.) Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation. Massachusettes, Cambridge: The MIT Press. pp.119-160.

The research demonstrates the following findings based on three case analyses. 1. Whereas having demonstrated technical advantages from users' side, there were difficulties of learning to use the new systems. 2. The information technology adoption and use was strongly influenced by personal, social and political factors. 3. Home access was identified in high use.

McKnight, C. (1997). Electronic journals: what do users think of them? Proceedings of the International Symposium on Research, Development and Practice in Digital Libraries : ISDL'97, Retrieved March 24, from http://www.dl.ulis.ac.jp/ISDL97/proceedings/mcknight.html,

The author conducted user studies on several digital library projects at Loughborough University UK. The research findings showed that people didn't like read articles from screens. They had to learn a different set of skills to manipulate e-journals. People liked to annotate while reading. They also liked browse and didn't necessarily want to search.

Montgomery, C. H. (2000). Framework for Assessing the Impact of an Electronic Journal Collection on Library Costs and Staffing Patterns, Proceedings of the Economics and Usage of Digital Library Collections,Retrieved March 24 2003, from http://www.si.umich.edu/PEAK-2000/montgomery.pdf

The Case study results at Drexel Univ showed that increasing amount of e-journals made building and maintaining a digital library collection more complex than doing the same for a print collection.

Neves, F.A.D & Fox, E.A. (2000). A study of user behavior in an immersive virtual environment for digital libraries. ACM 2000. Digital Libraries. Proceedings of the Fifth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, 103-111.

The factorial experiment results demonstrated that novice users faced difficulty when using the new technologies. They browse based on the results rather than using clustering. Users selected not until they found the best match, but until they found a match "good enough". Distance and position among books influence the result of book selection. Moreover, the user preferred less movement to browse and a decrease in total task time

Odlyzko, A. (2000). The rapid evolution of scholarly communication. Proceedings of the Economics and Usage of Digital Library Collections, Retrieved March 24, from http://www.si.umich.edu/PEAK-2000/odlyzko.pdf

The results of secondary data analysis showed that even the slightest barriers to access (e.g. long connect times multiple search interfaces to lean, et.) discouraged users.

Park, S. (1999). User preferences when searching individual and integrated full-text databases. Proceedings of the Fourth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, 195-203.

The author conducted an experiment to compare users' interaction with individual and integrated information collections. The research findings show that users preferred more control when searching, especially in distributed contexts.

Park, S. (2000). Usability, user preferences, effectiveness, and user behaviors when searching individual and integrated full-text databases: implications for digital libraries. Journal of American Society for Information Science, 51(5):456-468.

Based on the comparison of users' interaction with individual and integrated information collections, the experiment shows that there is statistically significant difference in users' searching behavior between using common interface and integrated interface. The differences include number of unsaved documents, number of interaction, and number of load query used.

Payette, S.D. et al. (1998). Supporting scholarly inquiry: incorporating users in the design of the digital library. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 24(2): 121-129.

Triangulated methods were used to examine the behaviors and activities of academic users using Mann Library Gateway at Cornell University. The authors found that faculty and students had difficulty understanding the new system. The faculty and students differed in the behavior and preference of using the system. Nevertheless, these users expressed great interest in multi-database search using a common user interface, links from citations to the library holdings, the ability to capture (save and print) information using Web browser functions, and control over the search whereas concerned about information overload, slow response time, and duplicate records.

Sfakakis, M., & Kapidakis, S. (2002). User behavior tendencies on data collections in a digital library. Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference, ECDL'02, September 16-18, 2002, Paris, France, .550-559.

The authors advocate that the transaction log analysis is an unobtrusive and effective way to study and evaluate user behavior in DLs. Accordingly, they analyzed log files for a period of 20 months to compare and evaluate the differences on the usage among data collections, based on the collection content type (dissertation, scientific journals, union catalog), metadata (details) and characteristics and also to approach the way diverse kinds of uses accomplish their requests. Based upon the analyses, the authors conclude: (1) the access points depended heavily on the type of content of the collection, the detail of the existing metadata and the target user group; (2) the majority of users tended to use simple query structures (e.g. only one term) and very few and primitive operations to accomplish their request; (3) when these users got more experienced, they reduced the number of operations in their session.

Spink, A., Wilson, T., Ellis, D. and Ford, N. (1998). Modeling users' successive searches in digital environments: a National Science Foundation/British Library funded study. D-Lib Magazine, April 1998. Retrieved on March 24 at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april98/04spink.html

The longitudinal study conducted in US and UK reveals that "users with a problem-at hand and associated question-in-mind repeatedly search a literature for answers, and seek information in stages over extended periods from a variety of digital information resources."

Sumner, T. & Melissa, Dawe (2001). Looking at digital library usability from a reuse perspective. JCDL'01, 416-425.

Through interviews and observations of assessing DLESE (Digital Library for Earth System Education), an educational resources repository, the associated information uses are looped as: reuse intent, resource location, comprehension, modification and sharing effects.

Tavistock Institute Evaluation Development and Review Unit. (1999). Electronic Libraries programme. Synthesis of 1997 Project Annual Reports, Retrieved March 24, 2003, from http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/elib-synth/97synthesis.html

This is an overview of the annual reports of forty-five eLib projects in UK, mainly associated with their second year of project activities. There were a number of findings related to human information behavior, such librarians concerned about increasing work loads of managing e-resources, faculty were as yet unwilling to change well-established habits of preparing reading lists, and many students (and staff) still lacked the confidence or the skills for effective use of networked information retrieval. The findings also showed that the majority of users did not plan a search beforehand. They use only one word, less often a phrase. Only few people use Boolean connectors or truncations. Searches are most often based on starting from a known term and develop as they go along by modifying or adding words, using synonyms or proper names. The overview showed the significant role of training workshops on increasing the use of subject-based services. It also reports that many more publishers now had developed or were developing policies on licensing their copyright materials for electronic use in academic libraries. Libraries were still the most popular access points to e-resources.

Thong, J.Y.L., Hong, W.Y., & Tam, K.Y.(2002). Understanding user acceptance of digital libraries: What are the roles of interface characteristics, organizational context, and individual differences? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 57: 215-242.

The authors used telephone interview method to examine external and individual factors affecting users adoption behavior on digital libraries. They found that all interface characteristics (clarity of terminology, screen design, navigation), organizational contexts (relevance, system accessibility, system visibility), and individual differences (computer self-efficacy, computer experience, domain knowledge) had impact on behavior intention. Among those, system accessibility, terminology clarity, and screen design had the largest impact.

Van House, N.A. (1995). User needs assessment and evaluation for the UC Berkeley electronic environmental library project: a preliminary report. Proceedings of Digital Libraries 95: the 2nd Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, pp.71-76. Retrieved March 24, 2003, from http://csdl.tamu.edu/DL95/papers/vanhouse/vanhouse.html,

The user study showed that the information search process was primarily casual and piecemeal, with a heavy reliance on experts. Their behavior can perhaps better be described as information trolling than information search.

Wolfram, D. & Xie, H. (2002). Traditional IR for Web users: a context for general audience digital libraries. Information Processing and Management, 38(5): 627-648.

The authors compared different user groups regarding their characteristics, patterns of access and use, and user feedback in a community digital library. They found that there were age differences. Users learned about BadgerLink mainly through libraries and educational institutions, but learn to use the service on their own. Users selected databases mainly based on familiarity with a database as well as content, publication reputation, formats, description and reputation were also account. Moreover, users preferred more on search than browse.

Zhang, Y., Lee, K. & You, B.J. (2001). Usage patterns of an electronic theses and dissertations system. Online Information Review, 25(6): 370-377.

The log analysis findings demonstrated that search functions was the most frequently used system function. There were a relatively small number of visitors who visit the ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) very often and actively make use of the resources. Displaying individual pages and table of contents were well-used functions. So did displaying images of portions of an ETD or ETDs in image format, and browsing indexes.