Assessment:User/Reuse

Building on the recommendations from Surveying the Landscape: Use and Usability Assessment of Digital Libraries, the User Studies Working Group's Content Reuse subgroup is focused on developing a needs assessment to better understand the desired scope and functionality of a toolkit designed to measure digital library object reuse.

Current Project

The Reuse subgroup is thrilled to announce that they are the recipients of a 2017 IMLS National Leadership for Libraries grant (LG-73-17-0002-17) Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Objects, which will identify needs and ideal functionality of a digital library object reuse toolkit!

Proposed Grant Activities

Starting in July 2017, the Project Team will conduct a year-long formal needs assessment, which will include data collection, analysis, and dissemination. Data collection will occur through (1) in-person and (2) virtual focus group sessions as well as via (3) pre- and (4) post-surveys. Additionally, the Project Team will form an advisory group to provide critical feedback on methods used for data collection and analysis and on the drafting of final recommendations. Throughout the project, the team will engage a diverse and knowledgeable community of practitioners to ensure that the defined needs of the assessment toolkit are collaboratively developed by the groups that will employ the final product.

About the Toolkit

The ultimate goal of the toolkit will be to provide a roadmap, tools, techniques, and documentation to assess the reuse of materials within a given digital library in order to help libraries plan and deliver content to different user groups. The toolkit will provide analysis of the purpose, strengths, and weaknesses of available tools and allow the user to choose the resources that best fit their assessment needs. Included resources will support the full lifecycle of reuse assessment, from defining goals, assembling vetted tools, and pointing to current studies and research in this area.

Project Team

• Genya O’Gara, Virtual Library of Virginia
• Elizabeth Kelly, Loyola University New Orleans
• Caroline Muglia, University of Southern California
• Ayla Stein, University of Illinois
• Santi Thompson, University of Houston
• Liz Woolcott, Utah State University

Get Involved

The working group maintains a Google Drive folder, which contains meeting notes and drafts of working documents. Our work is also archived using the Open Science Framework.

If you have any questions, or are interested in participating in the working group, please contact Santi Thompson. You can also fill out our User Studies Participant spreadsheet.

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