Haute école de gestion de Genève
Prof. Dr. René Schneider
Project management ACCEPT
+41 22 388 18 66
rene.schneider@hesge.ch

Usability & usefulness in digital libraries

The aim of the ACCEPT project – "Analysis of User Behaviour – Evaluation of Downloading Services" – is to provide support for the sub-projects of "e-lib.ch" with regard to their user-friendliness.

The project is looking at the following issues:

• Do users find that what is being offered to them is useful?
• Are users satisfied with the content and interfaces?
• What kind of services do they expect from a digital library?

ACCEPT evaluates the "e-lib.ch" sub-projects while they are being implemented and analyses the user-friendliness of the website and the usefulness of the digital content. The idea is to assess the actual effect of providing electronic resources in digital libraries and how the experiences and needs of users can be incorporated in the design of user-friendly interfaces.

There are two main objectives: firstly, the aim is to investigate the usefulness of digital services – i.e. the relationship between data and users – in order to analyse the influence, value and benefit of the digital content that is being provided. Secondly, it is a question of guaranteeing the usability of the user interfaces. Ultimately, libraries should be provided with the tools to measure these factors themselves in future.

Various different methods are used to evaluate the phases referred to above, so that the results validate each other:

• Quantitative methods such as user surveys in the form of questionnaires
• Qualitative methods such as focus groups and interviews with experts.

The project is closely linked to another e-lib.ch project "ElibEval", being run by the Swiss Institute for Information Science (SII) at the University of Applied Sciences in Chur.