D-Lib Group on Social Aspects of Digital Libraries

I. UCLA-NSF Workshop on Social Aspects of Digital Libraries

An invitational workshop was held at UCLA, February 15-17, 1996; 32 researchers, developers, and practitioners, 9 UCLA faculty facilitators, and 6 UCLA graduate research assistants participated. All materials from the workshop, including schedule and agenda, list of participants, participants' discussion papers and biographical statements, and summary reports presented at the meeting are available on the web site (http://www.gslis.ucla.edu/DL/).

We selected two research areas, each with three sub-topics, as focal points for a two-day workshop:

Information Needs: Identifying real information needs and developing digital libraries to meet those needs.

• Social context and culture
• Information needs and information seeking
• Linking user-learner needs and behavior to digital library design

End user searching and filtering: Designing digital libraries in which it is possible to find the right information in a glut of information.

• Organization, description and representation of information
• Search capabilities for users
• Interface design for information retrieval

II. Results of the workshop

While we bounded the scope of the workshop to provide a starting point for discussion and a set of criteria for selecting participants, our participants quickly expanded those boundaries.

The boundaries expanded in several directions:

• Level of analysis: Our scope, as stated in the background paper (see web site), focused on the needs and activities of the individual user. While important, we must recognize that individuals do not work with information resources in isolation from their communities. They perform individual tasks in the context of their work teams, classroom, and other social organizations. Many tasks are performed in group contexts; we must consider CSCW and collaboratory environments as well. Multiple levels of analysis are required.

• Scope of analysis: Our scope addressed information searching and retrieval processes. While important, we must set searching in the context of the cycle of information creation and utilization. People will create information in digitized form that becomes part of digital libraries and need tools and functional capabilities for doing so. They will search for information created by other people, and for purposes other than those intended by the creators, requiring a variety of searching functions. Once located, they will incorporate new information into other products and processes that become part of the life-cycle. We need consistent means to organize, describe, represent, and dispose of information throughout these activities and processes.

• Content vs. process: Our scope addressed digital libraries as a set of digitized resources and associated technical capabilities for searching for information, which is roughly the scope defined in the digital libraries initiative. This scope statement addresses the digitized content of digital libraries but does not recognize the social processes around digital libraries -- the "library" in digital libraries. We need to address both, hence the distinction made in the second definition stated in the beginning of this report.

III. Research agenda for Social Aspects Of Digital Libraries

We will present the research agenda with respect to the two definitions of digital libraries outlined above. These two definitions converge in a model of the life cycle of information and information processes.

The model covers the sequence from the creation of information (author, artist, memo-writer, data-generation scientist, publisher, etc.), through the searching for information, and the utilization of it, often for very different purposes than it was originally created. An exit from the loop is given to indicate that we do not need to save everything created in digital form -- indeed, we need criteria and mechanisms to decide what to keep and what to destroy. The model addresses the social context for all aspects of the cycle -- people create information for one purpose, search for it for another, and utilize for another. We need to organize, describe, and represent for multiple uses but we must design based on an understanding of what those uses might be. Similarly, we need searching and utilization interfaces that support many perspectives and purposes, with a variety of functional capabilities -- but all must be based on some understanding of the underlying tasks/roles that the information will play in a social context.

clb/wya
Last revised: March 18, 1996