Digital Libraries

David Rashty

1 Digital Libraries
 A library is an arsenal“
”of liberty
Anonymous

2 Digital Libraries
 Contents
• Introduction
• Technical considerations
– Interoperability
– Supporting technologies
• User interface design
• Examples
• Conclusion
3 Digital Libraries
 Introduction

First steps and related concepts

4 Digital Libraries
 Introduction

What is a digital library?

5 Digital Libraries
 Introduction

A digital library…
is composed of four main components:
1. a collection of digital objects;
2. information referring to those objects;
3. a structure for presenting information;
4. interaction elements.

6 Digital Libraries
 Introduction

Related fields
Library Natural
science language
Information processing Human
science computer
interaction

DL

Networking and
Multimedia communications
systems Database
management

7 Digital Libraries
 Introduction

Related concepts
• User interface
– The point of contact between human and machine.
• Data mining
– Extraction of new data or partial information from a
database.
• Information retrieval
– Popping up information (not data) from a database
according to users needs.

8 Digital Libraries
 Technical considerations

Interoperability and Supporting

technologies

9 Digital Libraries
 Interoperability

Definition
• Digital libraries are
collections of separately
developed entities that
are put together in order
to facilitate access to
information.
• The central concern of
interoperability is to connect
such entities in a functional
and efficient way.
10 Digital Libraries
 Interoperability

Design questions
• What are the basic technologies
that enable sharing information
between different systems?
• What is the best networking technology
for intercomponent communication?
• Data formats, document models, languages,
protection functions?

11 Digital Libraries
 Interoperability

Evaluation criteria
• The following criteria identify well
integrated systems:
– High degree of component autonomy;
– Low cost of infrastructure;
– Ease of contributing components;
– Ease of using components;
– Task complexity supported by the system;
– Scalability in the number of components.

12 Digital Libraries
 Supporting Technologies

An industrial design example

• Design activities and interaction structure that characterize
the industrial engineering design process.

Pejtersen, A. M.
Semantic Information Retrieval.
Communications of the ACM,
April 998

13 Digital Libraries
 Supporting Technologies

An industrial design example

• Technologies and design considerations for the industrial
engineering design process:
– In addition to common interaction capabilities with information
sources, engineers have to be able to judge the sources of
information for their reliability and trustworthiness.
– A strong commitment to knowledge management is an important
feature of industrial engineering systems: engineers need access to
previous cases and the distributed human knowledge in the
organization.
– The system must provide exploration by analogy.
– The system must be built around a transparent interface with
various functional capabilities.

14 Digital Libraries
 User interface design

Best practices

15 Digital Libraries
 User interface design

Design concerns
• Digital libraries must provide
search and retrieval systems
such that users can navigate
information space easily.
• Users must feel comfortable and receive continual
feedback from the system in order to get what they
are looking for.
• Design for globalization demands special attention
to usability problems.
16 Digital Libraries
 User interface design

Design concerns
• Some results from usability studies:
– Designers must provide a clear overview of the digital
library layout.
– The DL must provide facilities to filter search results
and save queries for additional refinements.
– Search criteria should include simple and
advanced searches.
– Searches and retrieval of documents should be
fast.

17 Digital Libraries
 User interface design

Design concerns
• Some results from usability studies:
– Users expect digital libraries to provide many of the
features found in a traditional library such as broad
coverage of many topics, readable text, etc.
– Users want to search by author, keyword, title, journal,
year and volume.
– Users want search results to be presented as PDF, HTML
or plain text.
– The DL must provide good help facilities.
– Provide cues for guiding the search process.

18 Digital Libraries
 Examples

Implementations

19 Digital Libraries
 Examples

ACM
Browsing and search
possibilities as well as
bookmark service for
subscribers.

Help facilities and

information about
usage and the system.

20 Digital Libraries
 Examples

ACM
Search by author, title,
terms. Each one offers
a number of options.

Options for limiting

the search (filtering).

21 Digital Libraries
 Examples

IEEE
Easy access to search
options as well as clear
exposition of the
objects in the library.

Users have a bird’s eye

view of the content in
the library.

22 Digital Libraries
 Examples

IEEE
Search by terms and
options on the scope
of the search.

Users can see the main

elements of the search
space.

23 Digital Libraries
 Examples

NCSTRL
Search, options and
direct access to their
archives.

Simple search options.

Search by author, title
and abstract as well as
sorting preferences.

24 Digital Libraries
 Conclusion

Research directions and conclusions

25 Digital Libraries
 Conclusion

Research directions

More usable Interoperability

and efficient solutions for
user interfaces the global
library
Intelligent techniques
for searching, browsing
and information
retrieval

26 Digital Libraries
 Conclusion

Conclusions
• Digital libraries are among the most complex
existing forms of information systems.
• Access to information today is simpler and the
sources are many. Building effective DL will help
people to deal with this situation by guiding them in
the process of information search and retrieval.
• The future of the web depend on interface designers
being capable of developing methods of reducing
frustration and anxiety for the users.
27 Digital Libraries
 Conclusion

References
• www.dlib.com: Online magazine on DL
• www.acm.org: Digital library of the ACM
• www.computer.org: Digital library of the IEEE

28 Digital Libraries