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The paper aims to focus on the needs of the digital library.

Digital library intellectual property right evaluation and method, application scope of commonly used methods, and digital library copyright evaluation and method are analyzed and discussed in the paper.

The paper finds that, for the electronic resources, the number of copiers, the term of usage, quantity of information, copyright, and the contract with authors should be considered; for technologies used in the digital library, the evaluation should cover the novelty, inventiveness, usefulness, and the access mode. In addition, the quantitative and qualitative should be combined with experience to evaluate virtual library resources and actual resources with stable right of use.

The paper provides recommendations on digital library intellectual property rights evaluation and methods.

Usability, functionality, and accessibility testing of digital library information services and products is essential for providing high quality services to users. This paper aims to detail a long‐term, evolving effort to develop meaningful evaluations for assessing digital libraries.

A multi‐year study to determine appropriate evaluation techniques, tools, and methodologies for the Florida Electronic Library (FEL) and other digital library efforts. The evaluation protocols and approaches were designed iteratively over time through assessment efforts with other digital library initiatives and with multiple versions of the FEL. The research described in this paper relies on a combination of functionality, usability, and accessibility evaluation strategies applied iteratively to assess libraries from the perspective of patron needs.

By combining these three methodologies, the researchers found that they were able to create a rich and robust evaluation of digital libraries, accounting for needs of diverse user populations. These methodologies can provide detailed evaluations of the extent to which information and services are comprehensible for all users, the extent to which the features and functions necessary to provide library functions operate properly, and the extent to which the digital library meets the needs of a diverse population of users.

This paper aims to demonstrate the potential roles of multiple, iterative evaluation strategies in the development and refinement of digital libraries; details the methodologies that focus on how the services meet the needs of users; and encourages further discussion of the uses of these multiple evaluation approaches in assessing these libraries.

The main objective of this paper is to review work on the usability and impact of digital libraries.

Work on the usability and impact of digital libraries is reviewed. Specific studies on the usability and impact of digital libraries in specific domains are also discussed in order to identify general and specific usability and impact measures.

The usability studies reviewed in this paper show that a number of approaches have been used to assess usability. In addition to the technical aspects of digital library design (e.g. architecture, interfaces and search tools), there are a number of usability issues such as globalisation, localisation, language, culture issues, content and human information behaviour. Digital libraries should, however, be evaluated primarily with respect to their target users, applications and contexts.

Although a digital library evaluation study may have several objectives, ranging from the evaluation of its design and architecture to the evaluation of its usability and its impact on the target users, this paper focuses on usability and impact.

This paper provides insights into the state‐of‐the art in relation to the usability and impact of digital libraries.

The purpose of this study is to synthesize prior user-centered research to develop and present a generalized framework for evaluating visual, i.e. both image and video digital libraries. The primary objectives include comprehensively examining the current state of visual digital library research to: develop a generalized framework applicable for designing user-centered evaluations of visual digital libraries; identify influential experimental factors warranting assessment evaluation as part of specific contexts; and provide examples of applied methods that have been used in research, demonstrating notable findings.

The framework presented in the present study depicts a set of user-centered methodological considerations and examples, synthesized from a review of prior research that provides significant understanding of users and uses of visual information.

Primary components for digital library evaluation, pertaining to user, interaction, system and domain and topic, and their implications for interactive research are presented. Methods, examples and discussion are presented for each primary evaluation component of the framework.

Previously applied evaluations and their significance are described and presented as part of the developed framework, providing the importance of each component for practical application in future research and development of interactive visual digital libraries.

Visual digital libraries warrant individual assessment, apart from other types of digital collections, as they offer users more ways to retrieve and interact with collection items. The present study complements prior digital library evaluation research by demonstrating the need for a separate framework due to variations influenced by visual information and reporting on evaluations from different perspectives.

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the usability of the recently developed IREON – International Relations and Area Studies Gateway – with the aid of an anthropological motivated research design. Within such an approach, the work environment and subject experiences of the test subjects become a crucial part of the observation.

The objectives are achieved by contextualisation of the digital library under examination. Furthermore, previous evaluation models of digital libraries are discussed from an anthropological point of view. As a result, a multi‐method approach that is context‐relative and self‐reflexive is applied to assess the usability of IREON.

The structural and cultural complexity of people involved in the development, operation and usage of IREON justifies a multi‐method approach. Whereas information specialists and web designers tend to focus on different kind of problems, there is a high degree of common discoverability between political science students and researchers.

Because of the contingent nature of digital library usage, evaluation methods and findings have to be always reassessed.

Anthropologically motivated usability evaluations are an inexpensive but efficient way to improve design activities.

This paper provides librarians with basic knowledge of anthropological methods to evaluate digital library services.

This paper aims to present the authors’ attempts to evaluate the access to archival maps available in digital libraries. Its aim was to pinpoint the factors determining the effectiveness of access to old maps and to evaluate which Polish libraries provide resources in such a way as to give the users the best chance of finding the materials necessary for their research.

The presented research focussed on archival documents from academic libraries accessible from the Polish Digital Libraries Federation and available from Europeana Collections. The evaluation criteria were established along with features that determine the level of difficulty of access to data describing archival documents. The research took into account the way of recording the data about archival documents in metadata. The authors have also analysed the quantity of available resources and the consistency of metadata record.

The results of the research have demonstrated that one-third of the analysed libraries deserve a positive evaluation. The digital library of the Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian Digital Library received the best scores in terms of the description of archival documents. Considering the number of resources, the Jagiellonian Digital Library and the Digital Library of the University of Wrocław are positively distinguished.

The method of evaluating the access to archival maps has been developed. The criteria and features necessary for this evaluation and the way of their interpretation have also been defined. The future goals leading to the improvement of the access to the archival maps have been also presented.

To provide the results of research to evaluate the usability of a University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries digital initiatives project that provides online access to historical Aerial Photographs of Colorado.

This paper describes usability testing conducted as a part of a user‐centered redesign. The three stages of the evaluation – a requirements analysis, a heuristic evaluation, and user testing – are explained and the findings are discussed.

The usability testing revealed the needs of the project's target user group and identified issues with the interface that will be addressed in its redesign. It has also contributed to the larger understanding of how researchers use digital Aerial Photographs and their preferred methods of access and desired functionalities.

Results from the study will be used to guide the redesign of the Aerial Photographs of Colorado digital library and can be generalized to add to a broader understanding of the usability requirements for a digital library of geospatial materials. Libraries providing a digital collection of geospatial materials may use these findings to inform design decisions.

Much research has been done on the use and evaluation of digital libraries, but few articles have reported on usability studies of online collections of cartographic materials similar in structure to Aerial Photographs of Colorado. It is hoped that these findings will be instructive to librarians designing and evaluating similar digital libraries.

This study aims to develop a measurement instrument, which involves four usability dimensions of efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, and learnability, as a way of assessing the usability of academic digital libraries.

To generate measurement items, previous research related to usability frameworks, usability guidelines, and empirical usability tests was reviewed. The measurement instrument was then verified in terms of reliability and validity, empirically using data from 230 actual users of an academic digital library. To ensure the reliability of the instrument, internal consistency of measurements, measurement item reliability, and construct reliability were examined. Construct validity, which consists of convergent validity and discriminant validity, was also examined on the basis of confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling.

The usability evaluation instrument suggested in this study comprises four dimensions: efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, and learnability, and three to four items were identified to measure each dimension.

To date, while many of the usability studies have relied on either experimental methods or inspection methods, few studies have been conducted to identify evaluation measures that can assess the usability of a digital library from a survey method. This study is one of a few studies to develop a measurement instrument tailored to academic digital library environments.

The purpose of this study is to identify the situation of evaluating Iranian digital libraries using DigiQUAL protocol.

Evaluative survey research method is used in this study to assess digital libraries. In this way, digital libraries of Iranian research institutes constitute the study population. DigiQUAL protocol actually was used to evaluate eight Iranian digital libraries. Systematic observation and interview based on researcher-made checklist was used for data collection. In fact, checklist was constructed based on DigiQual protocol.

The results showed that Digital Library of Isfahan Science and Technology Town has the best performance and Noor digital library has the lowest operation in studied digital libraries. The overall score of all studied digital libraries was under 60 (out of 100) which shows the average performance of the digital libraries.

This study emphasizes on evaluating active digital libraries in Iran by DigiQUAL protocol. Because digital libraries are new in Iran and their progress need to evaluate their activity, this research was done to demonstrate their situation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed plan of research on the information architecture of digital library websites.

The research plan was prepared on the basis of a critical analysis of the scientific literature concerning the areas and criteria for the analysis and evaluation of the information architecture of digital resources. The evaluation criteria selected in individual areas of information architecture and the entire evaluation model were tested on the example of Europeana. The study proposes criteria for all areas of information architecture: service identity, organizational system, labeling system and navigation system.

The proposed research model containing areas and criteria for assessing usefulness from the point of view of information architecture may complement the methodology for assessing digital libraries. In a structured manner, it presents areas important for building good digital resources together with criteria for heuristic evaluation. This thesis is confirmed by a study conducted on the example of Europeana.

For a more precise assessment of quality, you can add to the proposed criteria related to the information architecture the criteria proposed by Nielsen or other authors. These include, e.g. help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors, result relevance, consistency of terminology and specific action conventions and an appropriate visual presentation.

The model can be used to assess the quality of websites of various digital libraries.

The methodology of assessing the quality of digital libraries is in the stage of formation and development. Such studies can apply evaluation criteria prepared to analyze all kinds of information systems and most of all web pages. At the beginning of the 21st century, concepts of using information architecture principles to design and evaluate digital libraries’ usability began to take shape. However, no detailed criteria for evaluating digital libraries based on the principles of information architecture have been presented.