Improving The Usability Of Digital Libraries

Digital libraries are useful only to the extent that they are usable. Unless intended users can readily and easily access digital library content, no justification seems possible for the very large investments libraries are making in the provision of digital information resources. These are conclusions reached by a panel of interaction design experts, as elaborated in an IEEE Digital Library Technical Committee article authored by Ann Blandford and George Buchanan, who argue that: "There is a natural tension between technical developers who are creating new interaction possibilities and usability specialists who want products that work with users the way users think in the context of their current tasks."

http://www.ieee-tcdl.org/Bulletin/current/blandford/blandford.html
(TCDL Bulletin Summer 2003)

Blandford and Buchanan document the progress digital libraries have made over the past few years in meeting the technical challenges faced by users working in many situations (academia, medicine and other professions). Nevertheless, if such resources are to have maximum impact on the way people work with information, they must fit naturally with the ways people work. User needs have to be taken into account from the earliest stages and the deepest levels of design. Usability, the authors stress, cannot be "added on" at the end.

Posted by Tom on October 27, 2003