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1995
November to December 1995Laura Neumann, Emily Ignacio, and Ann Bishop were involved in setting up and a series of data collection efforts with physicists working at Beckman. We hope to learn more detail about their workflows and how the testbed will be useful for them. Bob Sandusky was taking the lead on developing and refining the user registration process and instrumentation of the soon-to-be-released first version of the testbed. Sandusky also wrote a paper about the management of distributed systems. We have been developing an agenda for the upcoming year. September to October 1995Laura Neumann and Leigh Star analyzed interviews with Digital Library Initiative members and wrote a paper entitled "Object Worlds and Shifting Infrastructure: Building a Digital Library for Engineers." This paper was presented at the Society for the Social Study of Science in Charlottesville, VA. Emily Ignacio and Ann Bishop took the lead in organizing and giving the 37th Allerton Institute. The central theme was "How we do user- centered design and evaluation of Digital Libraries: A methodological forum." Ann Bishop published "Working Towards an Understanding of Digital Library Use: A Report on the User Research Efforts of the NSF/ ARPA/ NASA DLI Projects" in the October issue of D-Lib Magazine. We cooperated as a team in writing "Building a University Digital Library: The need for a User Centered Approach" for "Higher Education and the NII: From Vision to Reality" in Monterey, California. This conference was sponsored by the Coalition for Networked Information, Educom, the American Library Association, and other organizations. Ann Bishop delivered a paper on the role of user studies for a conference called "Challenging Marketplace Solutions to Problems in the Economics of Information." The paper is titled "This little user went to market, this little user stayed home: What users, potential users, and nonusers can tell us. " In Butler, Meredith A. and Kingma, Bruce R. (Eds.). The Economics of Information in the Networked Environment: Proceedings. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries. Emily Ignacio, and Laura Neumann developed the report on all the data collection reports to date. It is entitled "John and Jane Q. Engineer: What About Our Users? " June to August 1995Laura Neumann, Bob Sandusky, and Emily Ignacio began observing the activities of patrons using various existing systems in the reference area of Grainger library. We are trying to assess how those people who will be the initial users of the DLI testbed are currently using related systems in order to understand how the DLI testbed could best fit their needs, capabilities, and work practices. Emily Ignacio began working on the data analysis from the user registration form and the transaction logs. We making efforts to begin working with Larry DeBrock on economic models and pricing trials related to the testbed materials. In August, Bob Sandusky, Emily Ignacio, and Laura Neumann began developing a first cut at a report on integrating the data collection efforts that have taken place over the last year. Greg Newby and Bob Sandusky began working with Mosaic developers to instrument Mosaic and the DLI testbed so that we can collect transaction log data from users. Some of the issues involved have been laid out by Alaina Kanfer in two working papers, the Digital Library Instrumentation Outline, 11/94 and the Instrumentation Proposal, 1/95 . Laura Neumann began working on an on-line user registration process so that we can collect basic information about DLI users. April to May 1995Leigh Star began developing the conceptual framework for our team to help us make sense of our methodologies, foci, theories and how these should all fit together. Observations and interviews were conducted by Emily Ignacio and Laura Neumann at a local middle and high school. The observations took place both in the school's general computer laboratory and in the school's library. Interviews concerned the students' computer usage and information finding habits. March 1995A prototype of an on-line thesaurus for the DL was developed by Eric Johnson. Emily Ignacio and Laura Neumann conducted usability tests of the system. Four people participated in this cooperative evaluation activity: a graduate assistant who works at the Grainger reference desk, a professor, a graduate student, and an undergraduate student. This report was generated on the interface. This paper by Eric Johnson and Pauline Cochrane describes the thesaurus. January to February 1995Observations were conducted by Laura Neumann at the Grainger engineering library reference desk to learn about what kinds of questions patrons brought to the reference librarian and how the reference librarian went about answering them. Since we are interested in expanding our knowledge of user behavior in digital environments by exploring other sorts of systems, Ann Bishop conducted an assessment of selected scholarly network journals. A report of this work appears as "Scholarly Journals on the Net: A Reader's Assessment" in Library Trends, 43: 4 (Spring 1995): 544- 570. Bishop also collaborated with Joseph Squier on a user- based study of three different kinds of on-line art galleries which explored this phenomenon from the point of view of galleries' artists, administrators, and viewers: Bishop, Ann P. & Squier, Joseph. "Artists on the Internet. " In INET '95 Conference Proceedings. Vol. II. Reston, VA: Internet Society,1995, 1009-1018. |