DLI social science team

DLI Social Science Team Home Page

send comments or questions to: l-neuma1@uiuc.edu

The University of Illinois DLI Evaluation Team: Who We Are and What We're About

A fundamental component of our DLI project is sociological research and evaluation related to digital library use. The mandate of our testbed evaluation team is to:

Provide ongoing user feedback for developing retrieval mechanisms, charging schemes, and other DL system features and functions
Document and analyze extent and nature of testbed use, satisfaction, and impacts
Identify reasons for use and non-use of the testbed, to gain a more complete understanding of testbed successes and failures
Contribute to theoretical understanding of the changing information infrastructure and how it is transforming engineering and library work, communication, and learning practices
Develop and assess new methods for conducting user-based digital library research, i.e., for capturing user data in the distributed repository environment
Contribute to understanding of how large-scale information system design work is conceived and carried out.

To pursue these goals, we have developed an integrated research program that combines broad study of use with deep study of social phenomena. Over the course of the DLI project, we will conduct ongoing observations of engineering work and learning activities and how they intersect with the use of distributed, digital information. Individual and group interviews will be conducted with a range of potential and actual testbed users from the engineering community. We will conduct usability tests of various components and versions of the DL prototype and experiment with economic models and charging mechanisms. Extensive data on use will be gathered through large-scale user surveys and system instrumentation (i.e., the creation of testbed transaction logs).