Assessment

Digital Library Assessment

Research and cultural heritage institutions are, as a matter of course, providing online access to converted and born-digital scholarly and cultural content. As the amount of that content continues to grow, there is an increased need to strategically standardize our assessment efforts.

The DLF Digital Library Assessment Group seeks to engage the community in developing best practices and guidelines for various kinds of digital library assessment.

We are concerned with:

• determining how to measure the impact of digital collections;
• developing areas of commonality and benchmarks in how we measure collections across various platforms;
• understanding cost and benefit of digital collections; and
• exploring how can we best collect, analyze, communicate, and share such information effectively across our various stakeholders—from collection managers to scholars.

This wiki will be a central location for documentation and collection of resources to assist those seeking to assess their digital libraries.

Using the Digital Library Assessment Framework, we have subdivided the areas for working groups into:

• Assessment:Costs
• Assessment:Benefits and
• Assessment:User Needs

We also have a Digital Library Assessment Google Group, which is open to anyone interested in learning about or collaborating on the improvement of digital library assessment.