Exclusion in Digital Libraries: A comparison of four different sites
- Exclusion
Who does this case study involve?
Participants in Digital Libraries
The case
This study highlights an essential aspect of the design process, which is the importance of understanding the environment and social context in which IT systems are going to be used. It does this by exploring the introduction and use of digital libraries in four different settings (three clinical and one academic). These settings were studied over a 4-year period and involved 144 users – including end-users, librarians, designers, and management, and their views were gathered, compared, and contrasted to identify relevant issues, using Grounded Theory, and the critical lens of “communities of practice” in its analysis.
The notion of “communities of practice” suggests that learning is not simply the formal acquisition of knowledge, but it also has a social element that should not be ignored. Learning is through participation in a community, and new members are brought into knowledge communities, and they can improve and transform those communities.
The digital libraries were implemented in three different ways across those four settings:
- The Traditional Approach: Making the digital library available on existing computer systems (in their offices and the library).
- The Shared Space Approach: Making the digital library available via computer systems in shared spaces (e.g. hospital wards).
- The Information Intermediaries Approach: Making the digital library available via information intermediaries who liaise with users as a community.
Findings
Interestingly, the different approaches, in their different contexts, resulted in different perceptions of the technology, as follows:
- The Traditional Approach made the users feel the digital library was not relevant to the current needs of the individuals and community.
- The Shared Space Approach had an even worse impact, where there were poor design, support, and implementation procedures; this resulted in the perception that it was a threat to current organizational structures.
- The Information Intermediaries Approach was the most successful, where it could adapt and change practices according to individual and group needs, was seen as empowering to both the community and the individual.
Ultimately this research shows that if IT systems are designed and implemented on untested assumptions, they will result in exclusion. The three different approaches in this work showed that if the systems are designed on the assumption of individual use of digital libraries, they will be unsuccessful, whereas if the community is part of the design of the system, and it is structured and presented well, there will be less exclusion.
References
Adams, A., Blandford, A. and Lunt, P. (2005) “Social empowerment and exclusion: a case study on digital libraries”. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 12(2), pp.174-200.