Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation (Hardcover)

Description:

The contributors to this volume view digital libraries (DLs) from a social as well as technological perspective. They see DLs as sociotechnical systems, networks of technology, information artifacts, and people and practices interacting with the larger world of work and society. As Bruce Schatz observes in his foreword, for a digital library to be useful, the users, the documents, and the information system must be in harmony.

The contributors begin by asking how we evaluate DLs -- how we can understand them in order to build better DLs -- but they move beyond these basic concerns to explore how DLs make a difference in people's lives and their social worlds, and what studying DLs might tell us about information, knowledge, and social and cognitive processes. The chapters, using both empirical and analytical methods, examine the social impact of DLs and also the web of social and material relations in which DLs are embedded; these far-ranging social worlds include such disparate groups as community activists, environmental researchers, middle-school children, and computer system designers.

Topics considered include documents and society; the real boundaries of a "library without walls"; the ecologies of digital libraries; usability and evaluation; information and institutional change; transparency as a product of the convergence of social practices and information artifacts; and collaborative knowledge construction in digital libraries.

Ann Peterson Bishop is Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Nancy A. Van House is Professor, School of Information Management and Systems, University of California, Berkeley.

Barbara P. Buttenfield is Professor, Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder.

 

Table of Contents:

Foreword Bruce Schatz	vii
1	Introduction: Digital Libraries as Sociotechnical Systems Nancy A. Van House, Ann Peterson Bishop and Barbara P. Buttenfield	1
	Part I
2	Documents and Libraries: A Sociotechnical Perspective David M. Levy	25
3	Finding the Boundaries of the Library without Walls Catherine C. Marshall	43
4	An Ecological Perspective on Digital Libraries Vicki L. O'Day and Bonnie A. Nardi	65
	Part II
5	Designing Digital Libraries for Usability Christine L. Borgman	85
6	The People in Digital Libraries: Multifaceted Approaches to Assessing Needs and Impact Gary Marchionini, Catherine Plaisant and Anita Komlodi	119
7	Participatory Action Research and Digital Libraries: Reframing Evaluation Ann Peterson Bishop, Bharat Mehra, Imani Bazzell and Cynthia Smith	161
8	Colliding with the Real World: Heresies and Unexplored Questions about Audience, Economics, and Control of Digital Libraries Clifford Lynch	191
	Part III
9	Information and Institutional Change: The Case of Digital Libraries Philip E. Agre	219
10	Transparency beyond the Individual Level of Scale: Convergence between Information Artifacts and Communities of Practice Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Laura J. Neumann	241
11	Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction Nancy A. Van House	271
12	The Flora of North America Project: Making the Case [Study] for Social Realist Theory Mark A. Spasser	297
	List of Contributors	329
	Index	335

描述：
本書的貢獻者從社會和技術的角度來看待數位圖書館（DLs）。他們將DLs視為社會技術系統，是技術、資訊工具、人們和實踐與工作和社會大環境互動的網絡。正如布魯斯·謝茨在序言中所觀察到的，要使數位圖書館有用，使用者、文件和信息系統必須協調一致。

貢獻者們首先問到我們如何評估DLs - 我們如何理解它們以建立更好的DLs - 但他們超越了這些基本問題，探討DLs如何影響人們的生活和社會世界，以及研究DLs可能告訴我們關於信息、知識和社會認知過程的內容。這些章節使用實證和分析方法，檢視DLs的社會影響以及DLs嵌入的社會和物質關係網絡；這些廣泛的社會世界包括社區活動家、環境研究人員、中學生和計算機系統設計師等不同群體。

討論的主題包括文件和社會；“無牆圖書館”的真正界限；數位圖書館的生態系；可用性和評估；信息和機構變革；透明度作為社會實踐和信息工具融合的產物；以及數位圖書館中的協作知識建構。

目錄：
前言
布魯斯·謝茨

引言：數位圖書館作為社會技術系統
南希·范豪斯、安·彼得森·畢夏普和芭芭拉·巴特菲爾德

第一部分

2. 文件和圖書館：一個社會技術觀點
大衛·M·列維