Master's Degree in Library Science and Information Studies.
"Automation applied to Information Services”

Module 6. Digital Libraries. Users:

Introduction Specific subject objectives Teaching strategies
6 Digital Library. design of digital services

6.1 How user communities are built around a traditional library.

6.2 How user communities are built around a digital library.

6.2 Methods for users measuring, surveys and evaluation.

 At the end of this item, students will have general knowledge about how user communities are built around digital libraries; their differences with traditional libraries, and how "digital users" are measured, surveyed and evaluated for proper planning inside digital libraries. The student will research trough the literature and the sites listed down below to prepare material for discussion in class about the following:

1. How users are evaluated in a traditional library.
2. How to make user' measures and surveys in a digital library.
3. How to evaluate users in a digital library..
4. - His knowledge and experience on the subject from work, discussion with colleagues, readings, or projects.

Description:
In a traditional library is easy to identify the user community: They come every day through the door and thus they can be counted, measured, categorized, and so on. Therefore traditional libraries can feed back into their decisions and to plan for the future its various actions.

But in a digital library user community is not visible since is not limited by the proximity or remoteness. This digital community will be different with no doubt. Who are they now? How many are there now? How far and which is their profile? The manager of a digital library need to learn new mechanisms to identify this new community formed around his digital library and learn ways to measure, evaluate, classify, etcétera, this new community. Otherwise he won't be able to provide feedback and planning to his library.

It is also necessary to justify investments made by the sponsors of the digital library, and therefore it is important to account for: how many people, how many visits, how many documents, etc. ie., how big has been the performance of the digital library. Failure to have measure and evaluation mechanisms will difficult to account properly for these investments, which is not good for any library.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUPPORTING READINGS MODULE 6:
1. Stefanov, Stoyan. "How to Measure Web Sites performance". See document

2. Savoia, Alberto. "Web Page Response Time 101". See document

3. Green, Andrew. "How do I measure the internet audience?". See document

4. Tramullas, Jesús, et al. "Evaluación centrada en el usuario de herramientas de creación de bibliotecas digitales: Greenstone." See document

5. Tramullas, Jesús, y Garrido, Piedad. "Los estudios de usuario en proyectos de biblioteca digital: Una revisión de técnicas". Universidad de Zaragoza. See document