Supporting Community-Building and Collaboration in Digital Libraries

Adam Worrall

LIS 6279, Fall 2009Dr. Melissa Gross

11/12/09

Existing DLs do not support well, through their content and services, the social context surrounding and within them

Should improve this support of social interactions to integrate better with social groups and communities (Lynch, 2005)

Propose that problem be examined with exploratory qualitative study

Examine role a digital library prototype plays in community-building and collaboration, and if it successfully supports them, through intensive interviews

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D-Scholarship2◦ Prototype of a digital library for scholarly

publications and gray literature◦ Currently under development and testing at

FSU◦ Testing group: 500 total students and faculty◦ May be opened to broader population before

end of study Everyone at FSU General public / other universities

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What role does the D-Scholarship2 digital library prototype play in community-building behaviors by those users, communities, and networks that use its content and services? Is this a successful role?

What role does the D-Scholarship2 digital library prototype play in collaboration behaviors by its users? Is this a successful role?

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Baltimore Learning Community (BLC) project(Marchionini, Plaisant, & Komlodi, 2003)

◦ Another project that tried to apply “sharium” model (Marchionini, 1999)

◦ Intended to support creation and sharing of instructional modules amongst middle school teachers Rarely added reflections, comments Rarely used modules created by others Faced number of technical issues

◦ Progress deemed “very slow” and “arduous” (p. 132)

◦ Cannot be considered successful

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Prairienet (Bishop, 1999)

◦ Another digital library studied using situated context (Bishop, 1999; Bishop et al., 2000) Web browsing, e-mail, discussion groups, collection of

digital information from local organizations Found many of the same issues identified in DeLIver

Difficult to use and learn because of lack of knowledge Training classes, connecting problematic

Bus schedules not matching with training times Missing or unplugged power cords Login ID forgotten

Information behavior of users dependent on social networks

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Convergence (Star, Bowker, & Neumann, 2003)

◦ Another promising theoretical framework Communities of practice “Information artifacts” (p. 244)

Information tools, systems, interfaces, devices Convergence between: “information world” (from Chatman)

Should be “fitted to each other” (p. 244)

◦ Three case studies; one of particular relevance 38 research scientists and students Convergence deepest for those with most experience in field “Closing off” of other possibilities sometimes an issue New members faced process of convergence that was

“rarely smooth” (p. 248)

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Implications of convergence◦ Community-building efforts should establish,

maintain, deepen convergence◦ Already existing communities must be supported

Can’t close off other possibilities, overlapping communities and networks

◦ Reiterates that DLs must be considered in organizational, institutional, cultural, cognitive, situated, and above all social context

Still need for “holistic and dynamic” model, framework or theory (Star et al., 2003, p. 261)

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Intensive interviews of users of D-Scholarship2◦ “Engages researchers more actively” (Schutt, 2009, p. 340)

◦ Best choice for this particular setting Maintain control Less scheduling problems Less expense No peer pressure Opinions and experiences obtained directly

◦ Interviews will use critical incident technique◦ All interviews conducted by researcher◦ Expected to average 45 minutes

Unit of analysis: D-Scholarship2 itself

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List of e-mail addresses and roles of testing group (sampling frame)

Entire population e-mailed a letter◦ Purpose of study◦ Augments ongoing evaluation of D-Scholarship2◦ Benefits◦ Contact information for researcher, IRB◦ Invitation to participate

Initial convenience sample◦ 24 total; at least 8 of each role expected

Further samples◦ Convenience, purposive, snowball sampling◦ At least 50 members (recommended by Flanagan, 1954)

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Critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954; Fisher & Oulton, 1999)◦ Obtains “certain important facts concerning

behavior in defined situations” (p. 335)

◦ Five stages; fall into three broader areas Operational definitions and structure

“functional description of an activity” (p. 336) Successful community-building

Satisfying information needs of one or more users Supporting community / network linkages Presence of high levels of convergence

Successful collaboration Actual solving of an information problem

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Interview procedures◦ Introduction

Reminder of purpose, researcher affiliation, benefits Thank you for participating in study Establish rapport

◦ Establishment of critical incident “Think of a time within the last month when you

faced a problem finding, seeking, or obtaining information, and you turned to other people to help you.”

“Tell me about this occasion and about the involvement of other people.” Discussion should ensue Provides background material on nature of incident

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Interview procedures (continued)◦ Discussion of D-Scholarship2’s role

Gently steered there by interviewer A few possible questions (more in paper):

“Did you feel D-Scholarship2 supported that?” “Which features of D-Scholarship2 did you find useful during

this?” “Did you find that D-Scholarship2 caused any difficulties

during this?”

◦ Closing question Know anyone else using D-Scholarship2 for

collaboration, community-building activity (snowball sampling)

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Interview procedures (continued)◦ Note taking

Careful not to disrupt participants or discussion◦ Video recordings of interviews

Permission given as part of informed consent If feel uncomfortable, interviewer will ask if they wish to

stop Video recording wiped Replaced with another participant from sample

Analysis, interpretation, reporting◦ nVivo software◦ Informed by literature

Situated context, social constructionism, convergence◦ Other themes that emerge entertained and welcomed

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Critical incident technique◦ “both reliable and valid in generating a

comprehensive and detailed description of a content domain” (Fisher & Oulton, 1999, p. 115)

Validity very high◦ Qualitative, personal, subjective experiences◦ Less disadvantages than focus groups, participant

observation◦ Use of literature to inform analysis◦ Use of both video recording and interviewer’s notes

Reliability reasonably high◦ Within given population◦ Subjective measures; tradeoff with validity

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May not capture all experiences◦ No random sampling

Impractical, cannot force users to participate (unethical)

◦ Individual interviews Focus groups have disadvantages in this setting

◦ Users may withhold “failed” incidents Confidentiality to be maintained

Narrow population and research setting◦ Results limited to testing group population◦ Potential transferability to other settings

Further research required with other digital libraries and user communities

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Informed consent to be obtained in advance No major harm or risks expected

◦ May feel uncomfortable as interview progresses May choose to leave; video will be wiped

◦ Loss of a small portion of their time Identity, affiliation of researcher will be

known Confidentiality of participants maintained Maintaining appropriate boundaries Remaining safe in research setting

◦ Not expected to be issues

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Bishop, A. P. (1999). Making digital libraries go: Comparing use across genres. In E. A. Fox & N. Rowe (Eds.), Digital Libraries ’99: Proceedings of the fourth ACM conference on digital libraries (pp. 94-103). New York, NY: ACM Press.

Bishop, A. P., Neumann, L. J., Star, S. L., Merkel, C., Ignacio, E., & Sandusky, R. J. (2000). Digital libraries: Situating use in changing information infrastructure. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51, 394-413. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(2000)51:4<394::AID-ASI8>3.0.CO;2-Q

Fisher, S., & Oulton, T. (1999). The critical incident technique in library and information management research. Education for Information, 17, 113-125.

Flanagan, J. C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51, 327-358. Lynch, C. (2005). Where do we go from here? The next decade for digital libraries. D-Lib Magazine, 11(7/8).

doi:10.1045/july2005-lynch Marchionini, G. (1999). Augmenting library services: Towards the sharium. In Proceedings of International

Symposium on Digital Libraries 1999 (pp. 40-47). Tsukuba, Japan: University of Library and Information Science. Retrieved from http://www.dl.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp/ISDL99/proceedings_ISDL99/isdl-1999-40.pdf

Marchionini, G., Plaisant, C., & Komlodi, A. (2003). The people in digital libraries: Multifaceted approaches to assessing needs and impact. In A. P. Bishop, N. A. Van House, & B. P. Buttenfield (Eds.), Digital library use: Social practice in design and evaluation (pp. 119-160). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Schutt, R. K. (2009). Investigating the social world: The process and practice of research (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Star, S. L., Bowker, G. C., & Neumann, L. J. (2003). Transparency beyond the individual level of scale: Convergence between information artifacts and communities of practice. In A. P. Bishop, N. A. Van House, & B. P. Buttenfield (Eds.), Digital library use: Social practice in design and evaluation (pp. 241-269). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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