User Evaluation: Summary of the Methodologies and Results for the Alexandria Digital Library, University of California at Santa Barbara

摘要

The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) is one of the six digital library projects funded by NSF, DARPA, and NASA. ADL's collection and services focus on geospatial information: maps, images, georeferenced data sets and text, and other information sources with links to geographic locations. Throughout the project, user feedback has been collected through various formal and informal methods. These include online surveys, beta tester registration, ethnographic studies of ADL users and potential users, target user group focus sessions, and user feedback comments while using the interfaces. This paper briefly describes the evaluation studies conducted and what was learned about user characteristics and about the study approaches themselves. User reactions to the ADL interface and to the functionality and content of ADL are summarized. Finally, the value of these findings to design and implementation decisions is considered.