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Site Visit and Quarterly Reports send comments or questions to: l-neuma1@uiuc.edu |
User EvaluationSocial Science Research- Social Science TeamQuarterly Report (work from October through December, 1996) Overall Activities During the past quarter, the Social Science Team continued its work in developing DLI testbed instrumentation and registration procedures. They completed a round of usability testing and practices. Team members also continued their professional contributions and the dissemination of their work by preparing and presenting papers, submitting proposals, and planning for the third Allerton Institute on user-centered design and analysis of DLs. Specific Activities The Social Science Team conducted usability tests for two of the three different DLI testbed interfaces, the IODYNE and web-based systems, currently under development (the custom client was tested in the previous quarter). They prepared reports of the results of the three usability tests and met with the system designers to present and discuss these studies. These reports are available on the DLI Web pages. One team member continued work with the Testbed Team to refine and improve the testbed instrumentation and data collection, including creating a user comment facility that is available from every testbed interface screen. The comment facility is intended to capture specific problems and suggestions that arise in individual DLI testbed use sessions. Team members redesigned the user registration process to reduce the number of questions and steps presented to testbed registrants, and implemented the new registration process. The Team also continued its reporting of DLI usage statistics. Usage statistics for the period August to December 1996 have been collected during the first period of limited deployment of the Testbed custom client in the Grainger Engineering Library. There were 102 registrations and 190 logins. Note: during the same five month period, 20 DLI project members and U of I library employees registered to use the tested. These 20 people logged in 441 times, mostly for testing and demonstration purposes. Social Science Team members designed a new naturalistic study of work and information practices, to be conducted in a campus computer engineering lab. Lab inhabitants have expressed interest in participating in DLI research. One goal of the new study is gaining a single subject pool for the conduct of research that previously has been carried out among different groups. A single subject pool will provide a focal point for integrating results from transaction logs, interviews, observations, and surveys, as well as for considering the methodological issues related to the Team's multifaceted approach to studying DL practices. In addition, the investigation of desktop and office classification work, begun by one Team member in Summer 1996, continued this quarter. Efforts to contribute to the emerging research community interested in social aspects of DLs also continued, with team members presenting and submitting papers, and submitting workshop and research proposals. The Team began planning for the third Allerton Institute on user-centered DL design and analysis. Their current plan calls for integrating the Institute with the production of a monograph that would serve as a culmination of all three meetings by presenting research reports and essays devoted to what has been learned about and from the DL studies conducted by Institute participants. Publications S. L. Star, "Working Together: Symbolic Interactionism, Activity Theory and Information Systems," pp. 206-257 in Yrjo Engestrom and David Middleton, eds. Communication and Cognition at Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Leigh Star continued service on NSF Ethics and Values in Science Panel. Consulted for white paper to NSF, "Machinery for Predictability of Complex Systems," September, 1996; co-organizer, with Rob Kling, of Social and Organizational Section, NSF Workshop on Human Centered Computing and Intelligent Systems (February, 1997). Robert Sandusky submitted a proposal for a workshop on collaboration activities in digital library use (with Michael Twidale) to Digital Libraries 97. He is also organizing a panel on DLI user studies for the Mid-Year Meeting of the American Society for Information Science. Ann Bishop submitted a proposal entitled "Digital Libraries and the Disaggregation of Knowledge: An Investigation of the Use of Journal Article Components by Researchers," which would grant a semester's release from teaching to pursue a research project, to the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois. Bishop also oversaw the development of material for the Allerton 1996 website and drafted a plan for Allerton 1997 which would result in the publication of an edited monograph devoted to user-centered design and analysis for DLs. Presentations Bishop, Ann P., "The Digital Library Initiative: Studying Use and Users," Technologies for Learning Seminar Series, University of Illinois, November 22, 1996. Star, Susan Leigh, "A Good Infrastructure is Hard to Find: Designing Communication Tools for Scientific Communities," Department of Library and Information Science, UCLA and January 10, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UC Santa Barbara, January 9 and 10, 1997. Star, Susan Leigh, "Whose Voice? Whose Differences? The Politics of Classification," at Workshop on Electronic Orders: Classification, Standardization, Formalization, and Genre in Electronic Orders, UC Santa Barbara, January 11, 1997. Star, Susan Leigh, "The Feminism Question in Science and Technology Projects," Plenary address to the Conference on Technology and Democracy, TMV Centre, University of Oslo, Norway, January 18, 1997. Star, Susan Leigh, "Infrastructure, Work and Digital Libraries," Norwegian Computing Centre and Institute for Informatics, System Development Group, University of Oslo, Norway, January 20, 1997. |