Facet Publishing

Summary

Most people start doing research as a requirement of an academic course or as part of their job. And for many, this will be sufficient experience of research. If the process appeals to you, however, you will probably be looking for a wider range of research opportunities and, before long, you will find yourself in a position where you need to obtain external finance to support your research.

External funding comes in two main forms, depending on who has the idea for the research. Either you have an idea for a research project which you then take to a possible funder, or the funder announces that they want to commission a particular piece of research and you submit a proposal. Each form calls for a slightly different approach.

The sources of responsive funding

In most countries there is a fairly wide range of organizations that have been established to finance research or that have research funding as part of their brief.

Academic research councils

The best known funders are the research councils. They exist to channel government money through to the academic community and, to this extent, they serve as an explicit acknowledgment of the central rôle that research plays in higher education.

In Britain there are several research councils. Social research funds are channelled through the Economic and Social Research Council which each year spends almost £100 million supporting research in the higher education sector. It receives a large number of applications from academic researchers putting forward their ideas for research. These are refereed and, subject to approval by the referees and the availability of funds, the award is made to the applicant's institution. The grants are usually quite substantial – most are for more than £50,000.

The Economic and Social Research Council, in common with most research councils, tries to encourage and support new researchers. To do this, it supports training in research techniques and has set aside a fund for small grants to be made to people who have not received a research council grant before. Applications made under this scheme are treated more quickly and in a slightly less bureaucratic manner than those for larger grants.

Summary

Many people think that, because you need to be able to work with computers and understand statistics, analysing quantitative data is harder than analysing qualitative data. After all, anyone can listen to a few recordings or read a dozen transcripts and make some kind of sense of them. They are wrong.

Analysing the results of qualitative research is a sophisticated and taxing process that calls for hard, concentrated effort, a clear mind and an intuitive approach to the data. If you are successful, the results can be impressive, leading to a deep understanding of issues and their causes. If unsuccessful, you can end up in an awful mess.

Basic principles of analysis

It is possible to identify some principles that underlie the analysis of qualitative data. Here I should acknowledge the work of Renata Tesch who in her book, Qualitative Research: analysis types and software tools (Routledge, The Falmer Press, 1990), has brought together a wide range of different approaches, most of them developed in the academic research community.

Analysis should not come last

Analysis should not just start when the data have been collected. You should begin thinking things through from the outset, trying to develop explanations and interpretations of the issues or circumstances that you are exploring. As the data are being collected you should be refining your ideas, questioning things and trying to see underlying reasons and causes. Analysis and collection should become integrated so that you can use what you deduce to inform in the next interviews or discussions.

Analysis should be systematic but not rigid

You should proceed in an orderly fashion with discipline. You should adopt an organized approach, pursuing lines of enquiry and documenting your work as you go on. You should only stop when new data no longer generates new insights. But throughout, you should strive to keep your mind open. Do not just look for evidence to confirm your early interpretations, look also for evidence to refute it.

Produce analytical notes as you go along

As you work through the data, pause every now and then and write a note to yourself setting down where you are and what you have concluded so far. These notes will help you to crystallize your thoughts and to track what you are doing and where you are going.

Summary

There are many different types of research. This book is about social research – about research into people and institutions and the relationships between them.

People have different motives for undertaking research. Some do it for academic reasons – as part of a course of study or to advance our theoretical understanding of the world around us. Others do it in an attempt to solve a problem or to develop a practical understanding of a situation. They may use the same research methods and manage their work in similar ways, but their starting points will be different. Their motivations will affect the design of the research and will, to a great extent, determine the way the results are interpreted and reported.

Academic research

Academic research is primarily concerned with developing a theoretical explanation or understanding of an issue. For most people the motivation will be clear – the research will be undertaken as a step towards the acquisition of an academic or professional qualification. For some, it will be an essential part of an academic job. In both cases the primary motivation should be reinforced by a more general desire to increase the sum of knowledge and understanding or, at least, to reduce levels of uncertainty.

Undergraduate and masters’ degrees

The first step on the academic research ladder will usually be a dissertation completed as part of a first or master's degree. This kind of research is intended to demonstrate the researcher's grasp of the subject or discipline and to provide a basic level of training and practice in systematic investigation. It also demonstrates the researcher's ability to handle and manage information and data, to organize their time and to communicate something sensible through 10 or 20,000 words of continuous prose.

The research is usually very self-contained and relatively modest in scale. It begins with a review of what others have written on the subject, followed by the definition of the research question that the dissertation seeks to explore. This question is then explored through a small-scale piece of research, perhaps involving the collection and analysis of some data or occasionally a detailed analytical review of the literature. Here the aim is not really to produce definitive answers, rather it is to demonstrate that the candidate can handle research methods, and data, satisfactorily.

Summary

The importance of research aims and objectives cannot be over-stressed. It is vital to have a very clear understanding of what the research is about and what you are actually trying to achieve. You need to know this. And you need to be able to communicate it to others.

Carrying out a research project is rather like going on a journey. It is a linear process during which, in theory at least, you move from your starting point to your objective and then tell others the story of your journey. In practice it can become much more complex.

Once begun, there are few opportunities to retrace your steps if you get lost or side-tracked. The project develops a momentum of its own and it is often difficult to slow things down or to alter course. There are also lots of fascinating by-ways and side routes that might be interesting to explore. This is made worse by the fact that as the research – or the journey – progresses, the level of complexity increases and it is easy to find yourself in the middle of a metaphorical forest with many paths leading in different directions and no clear indication of which is the best one to take.

Assuming that you manage to find your way through all this, you still need to retain a clear idea about where you are going so that you know when you have reached your destination.

A clear, unambiguous research aim coupled with a precise statement of research objectives will provide you with an initial sense of direction. It will enable you to design the research project, selecting the most appropriate methods. It will also provide the basis for managing the research once the project is underway. It will also be an invaluable guide when it comes to analysing the results and making sense of it all.

A clear idea of what you are going to do is also an essential part of obtaining support from others, whether they be stakeholders, potential funders or subjects of the research.

Summary

Libraries are undergoing a series of transformations, and the total effect of these changes amounts to a revolution in the way we deliver our services, our whole philosophy of service and how we are organized

(Corrall, 1995)

Nowhere are the consequences of these transformations felt more strongly than in the employment market for information professionals. Changes in the culture of information use; in the expectations and practices of users and in the technology of information handling all have an impact on the employment market for information professionals.

Employers are seeking new combinations of skills. Practitioners are confronted with rapidly shifting job requirements. In such circumstances, competencies may become more valuable than qualifications, while professional accreditation is likely to carry less weight than once it did.

Topical though these issues are, they are not new. The employment market for information professionals has been in the process of long-term change for the last thirty years.

During the early 1970s the main pre-occupation was with balancing the supply of and the demand for librarians and information workers (Library Association, 1977). Later in the decade, attention shifted towards new skill requirements as it began to become apparent that the growth in the amount of information available was changing the nature of the demands placed on librarians and information workers. In such circumstances, information professionals were becoming less able to exercise the fairly erudite set of craft skills which they had developed over the previous thirty years (Moore, 1986b; Debons and others, 1981).

During the 1980s the demand for information professionals changed significantly. Many new jobs were created and many of them called for a different range of skills. It was possible to see a greater requirement to possess basic information technology skills (Oppenheim, 1983; Angell, 1987). It was also possible to identify the emergence of a new class of information professionals – researchers and information analysts (Moore, 1987 and 1988). The changes were happening in Britain and in other information-intensive countries like Singapore (Moore, 1986a), Australia (Broadbent, 1984; Lane, 1982) and the USA (Koenig and Kochoff, 1984). During this period questions were frequently raised about the ability of the education system to produce new professionals with appropriate skills and abilities (Cronin 1983b).

Summary

Desk research can call for quantitative or qualitative approaches to analysis. Clearly, if you are embarking on the secondary analysis of data, then you will need to follow the same kind of approach that you would if you had collected the data yourself.

If, on the other hand, you are analysing the results of a literature or internet search or you are conducting a review of research, you will need to adopt approaches that draw heavily on qualitative research.

Common principles

There are, however, some principles that are common to the analysis of all desk research.

Authority and reliability

You need to begin by questioning the authority and reliability of the material you are working with. If you have collected the data yourself you will have a reasonable idea of the amount of trust you can place in it. If someone else has compiled the data then you need to look fairly carefully at how they did it.

You need to look at sample sizes and the basis for drawing the samples. You should, if you can, look at the data collection tools used – the questionnaires, interview schedules and so on. You should give some thought to the people who conducted the research – how much experience do they have, are they known to you, would you trust them? Clearly, data produced from one of the regular government social surveys will have a different standing from that produced as part of an independent study carried out by an unknown research team.

If you are dealing with published material, what authority does the publisher bring to the party? What steps will they have taken to ensure that the research is worth publishing? Similar questions could be applied to the research sponsor.

Be clear about what you are looking for

A structured approach to the material you have to work with is much more likely to bear fruit. Work out in advance what it is that you are interested in. At first you may only have a broad idea derived from your project aim and objectives. As you work through the material, develop a more refined set of issues and questions that you want to explore. At any stage in the process you should be able to state quite clearly what it is that you are looking for in your material.

Summary

You can now begin the task of converting data into information. Assuming that all has gone well with your survey you will have received back a large stack of questionnaires or completed interview schedules. What you now have to do is to process the data into a usable form, and to analyse it to produce the results from which you can begin to draw conclusions and so make recommendations.

Processing the data

Our ability to handle quantitative data has been transformed by computers. All the time we had to rely solely on manual processing we were limited in what we could do. Computers make it possible to carry out complex analysis quickly and relatively easily. If you are planning to make much use of quantitative data, therefore, you will almost certainly need to be thinking about using computer analysis.

Statistical analysis packages

There is a wide range of software that you can use to analyse quantitative data. You can, for example, do some fairly sophisticated analysis using standard spreadsheet software. This may well be the most appropriate choice for relatively small surveys that are going to be analysed in quite straightforward ways.

Then there are the packages specifically designed for data analysis. These come in different shapes and sizes, although the basic functions they perform are quite similar. Essentially they enable you to see not just how many people answered each question, but also how many of the people who answered ‘yes’ to question five, for example, also answered ‘yes’ to question ten.

The two market leaders are SPSS and Quantum, both now owned by the same company. SPSS, or the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, is the standard within the academic community. It is now available in Windows format and is relatively straightforward to use. There are lots of training courses available and a number of user-friendly manuals. It is probably the most obvious choice for anyone entering the field.

Quantum is more commonly found in the market research world. It operates in a slightly different way from SPSS and many of its users claim that it is more sophisticated and capable of more complex analysis than SPSS. Unless you work in market research, however, it is less accessible. There are fewer copies available (like the full version of SPSS, it is very expensive to buy) and fewer training courses.

Summary

Introduction

Since the early 1990s, with the rapid development of information and communications technology (ICT) and global attention to the conservation and preservation of cultural heritage, thousands of varieties of digital libraries (DLs) have been created all over the world for different applications. They are increasing in number and evolving in nature. Much effort has been made in the design and implementation of DLs, but their evaluation has not received as much attention in research and practice. Evaluation should be an integral part of the research and development (R&D) process. Although it has been seldom addressed in the literature, much work has been done, focusing on system-centred or objective evaluation. User-centred or subjective evaluation, using different approaches and methodologies, has increasingly attracted attention (Saracevic, 2004; Borgman, 2003; Marchionini et al., 2003). Nevertheless, DL evaluation is facing a conceptual and pragmatic challenge (Saracevic, 2000, 2004). For the conceptual challenge, a theoretical basis for evaluation is urgently needed.

The major purpose of this paper is to propose a multidimensional and multilevel integrated theoretical framework of DL success from the users’ perspective. Based on the components and nature of DLs, the challenges of evaluation and the problems of existing assessment frameworks, the proposed framework mainly adopts DeLone and McLean's (2003) Model of Information System Success (D&M Model) as a theoretical base, with refinement for answering the questions: How do users evaluate DL success? How do individual differences and DL contexts influence users’ assessment of DL success?

The components and nature of digital libraries

Scholars define a DL in different ways, but no matter how it is defined and evolves, a DL is an information system by nature. Borgman et al. (1996) and Borgman's (2000, 2003) two-part definition gives more insights into the components and nature of a DL. The first part of the definition emphasizes using information technology to organize electronic resources ‘for creating, searching, and using information’ (Borgman, 2000, 42). The second stresses the provision of user-centred services that are extended from physical to digital contexts. Through the information system (IS), users interact virtually with the DL to use services and to share ideas with other users. The two-part definition of a DL is not separated but inter-related, and it should be integrated as a whole both in research and in practice.

Summary

Introduction

This paper constitutes an initial approach to surveying the use of electronic journals in the state universities of the Spanish Autonomous Region of Castilla y León (the universities of Burgos, León, Salamanca and Valladolid). It is based on the samples provided by the smallest and most recently established universities, Burgos (UBU) and León (ULE).

The work focused on the use made by these two university communities of the journals included in the Emerald, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink and Wiley InterScience packages during the first few years of their joint subscription, between 2002 and 2004.

The literature on this topic has recently been revised and consolidated by Tenopir (2003) and in the papers of the seminar that the Ingenta Institute (2002) devoted to the subject of joint purchases and the extent to which they were worthwhile.

In the early days of the transition from paper to digital formats, consortial purchase served to expand collections in a way that suited publishers’ interest in generating a fresh demand for their products. They did this by offering in an electronic form, at marginal cost, material that in principle would not have been acquired for printed collections. The journal packages considered were obtained by the Castilla y León consortium (BUCLE) following the pattern of what has been termed a ‘big deal’. Such an arrangement was especially aimed at consortia, who were offered a spectacular increase in the accessibility of scientific information, breaking away from the former tendency towards continual cutbacks in library periodical collections. This approach has been the subject of debate (Frazier, 2001a, b; Rowse, 2003; Sanville, 2001). The economies of scale represented by consortia are very well known and are borne out by the constant growth in the number of such arrangements.

The financial benefits of joint acquisition of journals and the spread of their use in large collections set up on the basis of big deals have been the topic of a number of studies. These give a framework of reference for the current work, particularly the works by Sanville (2001) and Urbano et al. (2004). It is in this context that the employment of usage statistics for electronic resources should be viewed, as also should be any evaluations of the return on investment and details of user satisfaction.

Summary

Introduction

The publishing industry's largest growing sector is e-book sales (Macworld, 2004). For example, e-book sales for the first quarter of 2004 in the USA were up 46%, and e-book revenues were up 28% compared to the same quarter in 2003, according to the Open e-book Forum (2004). One sector likely to benefit from this growth is higher education, because the provision of e-books can be seen as a core feature of integrated e-learning strategies and synergies such as managed learning environments (MLEs) and virtual learning environments (JISC, 2003). Although many problems surround the provision of e-books, such as pricing and licensing ambiguity, budget constraints, and content bias towards the American market (Armstrong et al., 2002), e-books are making inroads into academia. Ebooks are being purchased from individual publishers, and aggregators of e-books, such as ebrary, OverDrive and NetLibrary, already established in the USA, are starting to penetrate the UK market. The latter provide integrated solutions for libraries based on remote-access servers that accumulate collections of e-books provided by different publishers. Although some research has been undertaken investigating the use of aggregators in public libraries (Dearnley et al., 2005) little has been done in the academic sector, particularly with respect to the usability of such services.

Some usability research has been undertaken on e-books in general, however. The Visual book experiment, for example, was one of the early attempts to define particular issues concerning the design of usable e-books (Landoni et al., 2000). The experiment revealed the positive implications of visual rhetoric and the book metaphor in e-book design. In addition, the Web project that followed the Visual experiment revealed that ‘scannability’ further improves the reading and overall usability of e-books (Landoni et al., 2000). The EBONI project followed. As part of this project a series of experiments was conducted, for example the Web Book II and the Psychology e-book projects, which confirmed the need for scannability and the book metaphor in the design and usability of e-books (Wilson et al., 2003), and a usability assessment of three online encyclopaedias that revealed the need to integrate web interaction features with the book metaphor (Wilson et al., 2004).

Summary

Introduction

The measurement of return on investment (ROI) has been applied to many different types of organization and community resource. Although this is common in the for-profit sector, the application of benefit/cost, cost-effectiveness, impact and ROI measures to libraries, museums, schools and colleges, parks etc. has lagged behind considerably. Part of the difficulty has been in quantifying benefits from non-priced goods and services that can differ from use to use, user to user, as well as from library to library (as their mix of service offerings varies). In today's climate of strained budgets and pressures for increased accountability and transparency, the need for clear and accurate statements of how public monies are allocated and used, and the resulting benefits or outcomes, is paramount in ensuring continued investment.

Overview of the study

In 2004 we undertook a landmark comprehensive study to assess taxpayer ROI from public libraries, specifically the public libraries in the state of Florida in the USA. Public libraries allow users to share knowledge and services at a cost to them as taxpayers and in the time they spend using the libraries; however, all taxpayers in Florida benefit from the public libraries through their considerable contribution to education, the economy, tourism, retirement, quality of life and so on. This study examined several economic approaches to considering returns on public library availability and use, and found that they all show substantial returns that exceed taxpayer investment.

The results: what we learned Utilization

How much use?

Florida's public libraries are extensively used, by both individuals and organizations. In 2003/4 there were 68.3 million individual visits to public libraries in Florida, and at least 25.2 million remote internet connections to the public libraries (not including remote connections by children under 18 or tourists). Florida's public libraries are used an average of at least 5.24 times per Florida resident per year, or 7.74 times per year by the 54% of Florida residents who have visited a Florida public library in the past year. Adult Florida residents account for just over half of the total personal visits to public libraries, school-aged children account for over one-third of visits, and tourists account for about 5% of visits. School-aged children visit Florida public libraries most frequently, at almost twice per month.

Summary

Introduction

Union catalogues have been part of the library scene for many years, during which there has been renewed interest as a result of the emergence of the networked environment. This paper presents the results of a study of the use and users of union catalogues which was undertaken as a part of a larger study of interoperability between physical and virtual union catalogues in the UK (http://ccinterop.cdlr.strath.ac.uk). The research sought to improve our understanding of the way in which people searched union catalogues, and to discover something of their preferences and expectations.

The paper reports the aims of the research, the methods used, and some of the results achieved. The results and their implications are then discussed.

Background

The context of this research was a project to investigate the feasibility of linking the physical union catalogue COPAC with the virtual union catalogue, the socalled clumps, which have been developed in the UK over the past decade. The project was known as CC-interop (COPAC, clumps interoperability) and full reports can be located at http://ccinterop.cdlr.strath.ac.uk. COPAC is a physical union catalogue of 27 national and university libraries which was developed and maintained at the University of Manchester (http://copac.ac.uk). It was created by a process of record merging, which has been described elsewhere (Cousins, 1997). Various virtual OPACS have been created in the UK using Z39.50 technology to enable simultaneous searching of one or more OPACs. The clumps relevant to this project are CAIRNS, the Cooperative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland (http://cairns.lib.gla.ac.uk); InforM25, the virtual union catalogue of the London region (http://www.m25lib.ac.uk); and RIDING, the virtual union catalogue of the Yorkshire region (http://riding.hostedbyfdi.net/riding.indexhtml). The research reported here was undertaken by CERLIM, alongside technical investigations undertaken by the CC-interop partners, and concentrated on user behaviour and attitudes to union catalogues. Using recorded searches, interviews and focus groups it complemented earlier questionnaire- based investigations undertaken by Stubley and others (Stubley and Kidd, 2002).

Summary

Introduction

The Open University (OU) has been in existence in the UK for more than 30 years, specializing in creating and delivering course materials in all formats for students at a distance. As a result there is a large archive of learning resources, managed by the OU library, which could potentially be reused in the making of new courses. The Digital Video Applications (DiVA) project was set up in 2000 to investigate the potential reuse of OU video footage when digitized and made searchable. What would the benefits be to staff, and possibly students, of an online digital video library?

The project's aims included the following:

Summary

Introduction

Linköping University introduces itself on the web as follows:

Exploring new fields, walking new paths. A non-traditional cooperation across subject and faculty borders defines the interdisciplinary approach that is the hallmark of Linköping University (LiU). An entrepreneurial spirit of education characterizes the university's history. Since its foundation in the 1960s, the university has established itself as an innovative and modern institution in both education and research. It was first founded as an independent college in 1970 and in 1975 it became Sweden's sixth university. Today LiU is organized in four faculties: Institute of Technology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, and Educational Sciences. LiU has about 27,000 students.

Linköping University Library has about 100 employees, 42 of whom work fulltime or part-time as subject librarians, as part of their job description. Many of them have been working with course-related web pages for five years. Together with teachers and researchers they have created library resource pages with internet links to course literature and reading lists; they have collected relevant web pages for courses; and have selected important journals and useful databases. Students can reach the pages from their course web. During the first two years of this project financial support was received from the Royal Swedish Library. Later extra funding was provided by the two faculties involved, the Institute of Science and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The aim has been to create methods for:

Summary

Introduction

The provision of services and resources to students who are based away from mainstream provision has been a reality for many more higher education institutions in the last few years. If this is combined with the fact that courses are delivered in centres not owned by a college or university, another level of complexity is added. The challenge has been to try and match the expectation of students and academic staff with the realities of service provision within limited budgets and staffing complements. This paper explores the themes of distance student expectations and the tensions these may engender for service providers attempting to meet those expectations. This is illustrated by focusing on the development of a foundation degree in teaching and learning support at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, within the context of the national picture of the Government's foundation degree agenda, which is firmly fixed in the idea of local delivery. Learning Services at Edge Hill College have developed a ‘lifecycle’ approach to the provision of resources, skills and learner support. The paper will outline the developmental process, from initial assumptions through modifications to the position to date.

Context

The Government's agenda: foundation degrees and teaching assistants

In February 2000, David Blunkett (then UK Secretary of State for Education and Employment) announced the launch of the foundation degree, a new concept in vocationally orientated, more flexible provision in the higher education sector. This was as a result of a number of Government reports that stressed the need to widen participation and develop a culture of lifelong learning, and was part of the government's vision to increase participation rates in higher education (Department for Education and Skills, 2004 and Department for Education and Employment, 1997). The key features of foundation degrees are that they are delivered by consortia, including higher education, further education and employers. The finished programme can be designed to meet the needs of a particular sector or occupation and will deliver a mix of academic knowledge, work-based learning and key generic skills. Greater flexibility in delivery and opportunities to progress to an honours degree programme were key aspects designed to suit the vocational learner.

Summary

The concept of ‘universal design’ is not a new one. Organizations and individuals have become much more aware that the provision of accessible electronic information makes not only good ethical sense but also good economic sense. The issue has been driven further forward as a result of current and emerging disability legislation (for example the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK), which requires organizations and service providers to ensure equal access for all (or at least to take reasonable steps towards this).

Advice on assessing of the usability and accessibility of services is widely available. In the field of web accessibility, probably the best-known organization is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), whose Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides a comprehensive set of guidelines and checkpoints to help ensure that websites embrace the concept of ‘design for all’. These are available in a number of categories, covering guidelines for the accessibility of Authoring Tools (ATAG), User Agents (UAAG), and probably the most well-known: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG. It should be noted that at the time of writing version 1.0 of the WCAG was still in use, and therefore has informed the findings reported here.

The WCAG Checkpoints are divided into a number of priority and conformance levels to help people assess the accessibility of their websites:

Summary

Introduction

Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF in Danish) is a co-operation organization for Danish reseach libraries. In early 2004 a new vision and mission formed the basis of a new strategy, and an action plan for 2004/5 was developed. DEFF's main target group is researchers, lecturers and students at institutions of higher or further education, and research institutions in the public sector.

One of the most important results of the activities over the years is the achieved level of library co-operation. All participants have learned to seek cooperation in areas such as operation and development in order to avoid duplicating work and to increase the value of individual efforts. An important area for co-operation is the evaluation of services through user surveys and usability tests, and these have been carried out for several years.

In the DEFF framework several evaluations examine the impact of electronic services on users, and this paper describes a large user survey from 2003 of three big Danish university libraries and usability tests of the websites of 11 of the biggest research libraries in Denmark.

The user survey exploits the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model, which is a standardized instrument for measurement and can be used by different libraries across types and countries. At the same time it is a unique platform for benchmarking and a tool for prioritizing activities for improvement. It can even be used for comparison of results across libraries and other sectors (compared to banks, supermarkets etc.).

The usability tests of the websites of 11 of the biggest Danish research libraries are based on user interviews and user behaviour studies. Again the tests can give the individual university library important information about how to improve the value of the electronic library services to the users.

User survey and usability test co-operation

As mentioned above, one important area for co-operation is the evaluation of services through user surveys and usability tests. The specific reasons for co-operation are:

• Better exploitation of resources. There is increasing economy of scale in nearly all phases of the implementation of user surveys and usability tests. As an example, typically the libraries will get more value for money by co-operating on a standardized questionnaire with local adjustments.

• Better results. The libraries can demand a tailor-made product of higher quality, when the task reaches a certain size.

Summary

Introduction

Are public libraries about books, or about meeting shared national and local government priorities? The obvious answer to this question is that they are about both, and that these things are not mutually exclusive. However, the public library sector in the UK seems to be suffering from an identity crisis, or perhaps more accurately, those with a significant stake in the service are divided as to its function and purpose. Consequently, what needs to be done to improve it, and how we should assess whether it is achieving its goals are matters of considerable discussion. If we are not sure who we are, or what our (main) purpose is, how can we establish and implement the best methods for assessing whether or not we are achieving our goals? Can we ‘prove our worth’ if there is significant disagreement about what the core nature of that ‘worth’ is? These might seem abstract distractions from the solid need to develop performance measures, and to devise methods for proving value and impact, but this paper argues that the issue of developing relevant measures of success is actually as much political as methodological.

Changing landscape of the public library service

The history of the public library displays a continuity of purpose and service provision (notably the provision of reference services and fiction, the promotion of reading, and attempting to meet the needs of all communities). In the last decade or so, however, there have been a number of trends that have significantly affected not only service provision, but also how the service perceives itself. The key question is one of purpose: what should a 21st-century library service look like and do? Allied to this are issues of how it should account for itself.

These trends can be summarized under three main headings, although the issues cannot be easily separated as they have developed concurrently and are closely interwoven:

1 Changing political landscape

2 Formalization of library roles

3 Technological developments.

Changing political landscape

There are two key factors at work here: changes in the way local government has to account for itself to central government, with a greater emphasis on value for money and meeting set targets that relate to central government goals; and the role of the public library service in delivering national agendas, such as equipping citizens with the necessary skills to participate in the ‘information society’.

Summary

Introduction

This paper introduces the Digital Libraries in the Classroom programme and then details the particular approach to evaluation undertaken by Michigan State University as part of the Spoken Word project, which is exploring the role of digital libraries in helping students attend to source information.

Digital Libraries in the Classroom

Digital Libraries in the Classroom is jointly funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (www.jisc.ac.uk) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (www.nsf.gov/) and is running from 2003 to 2006, with embedding activities within the host institutions in the UK continuing to 2008. The programme has been developed to bring about significant improvements in the learning and teaching process by bringing emerging technologies and readily available digital content into mainstream educational use. Projects are examining some or all of the following issues:

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