Notes on Saracevic
Questions
he raises
- What should we evaluate
- what is a digital library?
- what is there to evaluate?
- what are the criteria?
- how do we apply the criteria?
- for what purpose do we evaluate
- who should evaluate
States,
"Evaluation of digital libraries is a complex undertaking, and thus it is
a conceptual and pragmatic challenge" (p. 352). Is this still the case 16
years later?
We
can evaluate the technology and/or the user experience.
We
can look at how much someone can learn from this library (teaching aspects)
Cost
savings?
Scope
of the library?
User
centered would include: social level, institutional, individual, interface
system
centered: engineering, processing, content, cost effectiveness
Human
Computer Interaction Group at Cornell University established criteria for their
evaluation including: backstage concerns; legal issues; collection maintenance
and access; usability (p. 356).
Many
of the DL standards criteria have come from the physical library environment,
and only gradually are changing to accommodate the differences in these spaces:
raising issues such as availability of distributed sources like databases (p.
357), validation of sources (p. 357)
Ultimately,
Saracevic reduces the many competing values and concerns to looking at a
systems approach to DL evaluation stating that "evaluation means an
appraisal of the performance or functioning of a system" (p. 359) with a
focus on effectiveness, efficiency and combination of both.
An
evluation must indicate clearly just what criteria it will use from the wide
range of possibilities (p. 363)
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