A Cognitive Task Analysis Approach for Usability Evaluation of Digital Libraries

Background

The evaluation of digital libraries is a challenging task because of the complicated technology, rich content and variety of users who are involved (Borgman, Leazer, Gilliland-Swetland, & Gazan, 2000; Saracevic & Covi, 2000). While various sets of criteria have been developed for the evaluation of digital libraries, the most recognized ones are derived from evaluation criteria for traditional libraries, Information Retrieval (IR) system performance, and human-computer interaction (Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2003; Marchionini, 2000; Saracevic, 2000; Saracevic & Covi, 2000). In the past years, DL evaluation research has been conducted on different aspects and can be summarized mainly into such categories as 1) general DL evaluation framework and evaluation criteria, 2) specific DL evaluation framework and evaluation criteria, 3) usability studies, and 4) evaluation studies on other aspects (Xie, 2008, p. 1348).