Supporting Community-Building and Collaboration in Digital

Libraries

Adam WorrallLIS 6279 Research in LIS

Fall 2009Dr. Melissa Gross

Digital libraries (DLs)

Two camps (Borgman, 1999)

“content collected on behalf of user communities”

“institutions or services”

Both are requiredLevy and Marshall (1995)

○ DL as social environmentBearman (2007)

Communities and networks Communities of practice

Lave and WengerGroups of “people working together on

the same or similar tasks” (Brown & Duguid, 2002, p. 141)

Restricted to within a particular organization

Networks of practice (Brown & Duguid, 2002)Not restricted; larger, broader groupMay not even be aware of each other’s

existence

Communities and networks

Research problem

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)

Significance

Most acknowledge DLs need communityNo DL without that community

Many researchers argue for need for DLs to consider social interactionsLevy and Marshall (1995)Marshall and Bly (2004)Lynch (2005)Pomerantz and Marchionini (2007)Gazan (2008)

Exploratory, pilot study How successfully does the D-

Scholarship2 digital library prototype support community-building by those users, communities, and networks that use its content and services?

How successfully does the D-Scholarship2 digital library prototype support collaboration by its users?

Research questions

Failures CKESS (Bieber et al., 2002) CYCLADES (Candela & Straccia, 2003) Sharium model (Marchionini, 1999)

American Front Porch (AFP) (Sonnenwald et al., 1999)

Open Video Digital Library (OVDL) (Marchionini, Wildemuth, & Geisler, 2006)

Reasons:Overly ambitious; too many methods usedLack of fundingUnhealthy level of idealism

Flawed approaches Using external tools (Hull, Pettifer, & Kell, 2008)

Restrictive definition of digital libraries as database

Group commonality (Papatheodorou, Kapidakis, Sfakakis, & Vassiliou, 2003)Quantitative log miningNarrow definition of communities as those with

common search query vocabulary Physical paradigm, system-centered rather

than user-centered services Overly simplistic, anachronistic research

Relative successes Social annotations

AnswerBag (Gazan, 2008)

○ Web 2.0 question-and-answer site○ Faced many of the same challenges as DLs○ Highly successful; > 1 million users○ Shows promise of social annotations method

Situated context (Bishop et al., 2000)

Examine digital library use in context of not just individual needs and behavior, but also interactions between users and others in the community

Relative successes

Situated context (continued)DeLIver (University of Illinois) (Bishop et al., 2000)

○ Large sample sizes, many (mixed) methods○ Heavy use by graduate students and faculty○ Must look at differences between groups,

communities, even still individuals○ Must take social context into account

Further study required

Social constructionism (Tuominen, Talja, & Savolainen, 2003)Places “the primary emphasis on discourse”

(p. 564)

ScholOnto○ Prototype used social constructionism theory○ Provided for collaboration○ Appears moribund

Conversation-based and centered○ Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Google Wave

Further study required

WikisSurprisingly little digital library-specific

researchPlanetMath (Krowne, 2003)

○ “commons-based peer production (CBPP)” (Introduction)

○ Used wiki model with some changes○ Identified five challenges○ Met them well○ Successful; over 2,500 entries

Further study required

Wikis (continued)Problems and issues

○ Often found difficult to use (e.g. Chu, 2008)

○ Not used for patron collaboration in physical libraries (Bejune, 2007)

Conclusions○ Must educate users○ Must use socio-technical approach

Further study required Social network analysis (Garton,

Haythornthwaite, Wellman, 1997)Range

○ Size and heterogeneity of social networkDensity

○ How many relations and ties actually occur, compared to theoretical maximum

Measures have face validity for measuring DL community-building

No literature applying it to digital library users and/or communities

Population Users of D-Scholarship2

Prototype of digital library for scholarly publications and gray literature

Currently under development at FSUTesting group: 500 total

○ 300 upper-level undergraduates○ 150 graduate students○ 50 faculty members

Note no freshmen, sophomores, staffCannot be generalized outside of FSU

Sampling

Sampling frameE-mail addresses and roles for testing group

Stratified, systematic random sample200 participants

○ 45 faculty (oversampled)○ 66 graduate students○ 89 undergraduate students (undersampled)

Random number generators to be used for sampling interval, starting point

Survey Administration Pre-test

5+ doctoral students and/or faculty from SLIS15 from main study sampling frame

○ 5 from each stratum

Identification stringe.g. “G538”, “U293”, “F941”Letter identifies roleThree random numbers

○ Unique across entire sampleKept securely, confidentially by researcher

Survey Administration Main study

Initial e-mail with letter○ Study purpose○ Benefits○ Informed consent disclaimer○ Contact information○ Identification string○ Link to survey web site

Further e-mails○ 2 weeks, 5 weeks (modified letter stressing

benefits)Data collection finished at 8 weeks

Survey Instrument Operational measures of

Community-buildingCollaborationBoth drawn partly from social network

analysisOther dimensions independently constructedAllow for socio-technical analysis

Design and hostingFSU-hosted, researcher-created web siteQuestions grouped into pages

○ Not to overwhelm participants

Other Considerations Response rate

Expected to be high○ Testing group already testing DL○ No ethical issues○ Careful pretesting

Validity and reliabilityRelatively high

○ Social network analysis measures have high face validity

○ Pretest should help ensure high validity○ Reliability should be high within population as

defined

Other Considerations Limitations

Limited generalizability○ Narrowly defined population○ Further research required with other DLs

Cannot find best method○ D-Scholarship2 doesn’t use all methods○ Further research required with other DLs

Ethical considerationsNo issues; no coercion, deception, very little

risk, little to no harm, informed consent

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