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A Usability Evaluation Methodology of Digital Library

Authors:
Luz A. Sánchez-Gálvez
Juan M. Fernández-Luna

Keywords: digital libraries; usability evaluation methodology; usability dimensions; evaluation instrument; aggregation operators.

Abstract:
Digital Libraries are information systems that allow managing and preserving digital resources, as well as providing access to them. The designing of these kinds of systems should always be completed having in mind the users. Accordingly, it is of outmost importance that the user interface presents a high level of usability. In this paper, a usability evaluation methodology of Digital Libraries is proposed; specifically for the Web site of Academic Digital Libraries. The methodology offers a evaluation instrument that collects the users' perceptions through four dimensions (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction and learnability). In addition, the gap theory of quality service is employed and a fuzzy linguistic approach using aggregation operators, which operate directly with words (linguistic information) is applied. Therefore, the methodology shows to be a significant, innovative contribution to the research area on usability evaluation of digital libraries. It can be useful for both an academic library Web site and an operational digital library. A case study is presented in order to demonstrate the usage of usability evaluation methodology of digital library.

Pages: 23 to 28

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: February 22, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4375

ISBN: 978-1-61208-386-5

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from February 22, 2015 to February 27, 2015