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Katherine Kott, Aquifer Director Library Assessment Conference Seattle, WA August 5, 2008

Proposition: Digital Collections Are Easier to Find and Use through DLF Aquifer’s American Social History Online. Katherine Kott, Aquifer Director Library Assessment Conference Seattle, WA August 5, 2008. From planning to assessment: methods and tools. Background Planning Design

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Katherine Kott, Aquifer Director Library Assessment Conference Seattle, WA August 5, 2008

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  1. Proposition: Digital Collections Are Easier to Find and Use through DLF Aquifer’s American Social History Online Katherine Kott, Aquifer Director Library Assessment Conference Seattle, WA August 5, 2008

  2. From planning to assessment: methods and tools • Background • Planning • Design • Development • Assessment

  3. Project background: American Social History Online • To make distributed digital material easier to find and use • Designed for • Teaching • Learning • Scholarship • Web site and associated services

  4. What’s the problem? Use and Users of Digital Resources by Diane Harley Educause Quarterley, November 4, 2007 Too distributed Overwhelming Poor quality

  5. The need for a more robust infrastructure for digital scholarship in the humanities and social sciences

  6. What’s the solution? Number one goal in the Digital Library Federation founding charter (1995) The implementation of a distributed, open digital library conforming to the overall theme [of America’s heritage and culture] and accessible across the global Internet. This library shall consist of collections -- expanding over time in number and scope -- to be created from the conversion to digital form of documents contained in our and other libraries and archives, and from the incorporation of holdings already in electronic form.

  7. Enter DLF Aquifer • Emergent distributed open digital library initiative • Named in 2003 • Organizational structure (director and working groups) established 2005 • Created policies, schemas, best practices • Services Working Group responsible for keeping the focus on the “content consumer”

  8. Contributions to the community • Experiments • Models • Methods • Best practices

  9. Surveyed DLF membership to determine what information had been gathered

  10. Leverage collaboration for service development

  11. What services? • Use cases derived from existing user studies • CDL American West project • DLF Scholars Panel • Other reports cited in Institutional Survey Report • Personas and tasks methodology from CDL • Common business functions from Service Framework • Clarified target audiences • Faculty • Graduate students • Undergraduates

  12. American Social History Online • Funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation • Small development team • Link to working groups—an Aquifer “instance” • Emphasis on • Designing and building for scholar • Assessment • Planning for sustainability

  13. Agile development • Build prototype based on planning and design • Involve graduate students, faculty and librarians • User stories • Using the software • Conference calls • Incorporate ideas and re-release every 2-4 weeks

  14. Products • American Social History Online Web site • Integration with Zotero • Search engine optimization for improved discovery • Integration with Sakai • Federated search to include commercial content

  15. Assessment • Improving access for scholars • Stimulating new research questions • Supporting interdisciplinary study • Supporting cross regional research • Increasing digital collection use

  16. Methods • Interviews • Survey • Focus groups • Observation • Longitudinal study • Transaction log analysis

  17. Rapid prototyping & Formal assessment • User services librarians unfamiliar with agile methods—confusing • Rapid prototyping—heuristic--creating the framework • Assessment—digging into the details

  18. Results • Preliminary results to be reported DLF Fall Forum, November 2008 • Final results to be reported DLF Spring Forum, April 2009

  19. Questions & Comments? kkott@diglib.org www.dlfaquifer.org

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