physical and social approaches to subject access services in digital libraries adam worrall lis 6919...

Physical and Social Approaches to Subject

Access Services in Digital LibrariesAdam Worrall

LIS 6919 Foundations in LISDr. Corinne Jörgensen

Fall 2009 | 12/1/09

Adam Worrall | LIS 6919 Foundations | 12/1/09

Overview• Digital libraries should provide services

(Bearman, 2007; Lynch, 2005; Pomerantz & Marchionini, 2007)

• Subject access services vital (Pomerantz, 2008)

▫Traditionally seen as “behind the scenes”▫Make library actually usable

• Physical▫System function▫Behind the scenes▫Author’s objective, intent

• Social▫Serve users directly▫Subjective, multiple interpretations▫Socially constructed, ever-changing context

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Physical paradigm• Information

▫Objective▫Material “thing” (Buckland, 1991)

▫Controlled primarily through information retrieval (IR) systems

•Digital libraries▫IR-based services “at the heart of DLs” (Fox &

Urs, 2002, p. 539)

▫Publicly available IR systems▫Databases of information and content▫Role of users downplayed (Borgman, 1999)

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Subject access services•Do not address or serve users directly•Summarize content in surrogate form

▫Indexers and catalogers held to be able to summarize content “in an objective manner” (Hutchins, 1978, p. 172)

▫Because aboutness is considered objective, such summaries can instead be automatically and algorithmically generated (see e.g. Salton, Allen, & Buckley, 1994)

•Use algorithmic or topical relevance(Maron, 1977, p. 39)

•General absence of “people and users”(Saracevic, 1999, p. 1057)

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Research questions•Similar to traditional IR research•Often based on architecture and design of

digital libraries•Often from a computer science or

engineering perspective•Always ask about system•Rarely ask about users•Always require aboutness to be objective•Usually require possibility of algorithmic,

automatic determination of aboutness

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Research questions•Examples

▫How should the “network-based aspects of [an] infrastructure” for digital libraries be structured? (Kahn & Wilensky, 1995, Section 1, para. 4)

▫How can we structure an open architecture or framework for digital library collection services? (Lagoze & Fielding, 1998; Lagoze & Payette, 1998; Lagoze et al., 2002)

▫Can “automatic metadata creation and normalization … replace substantial human effort?”(Lagoze et al., 2002, p. 208)

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Research methods•Experimental evaluation

▫Similar to traditional IR▫Independent of user characteristics

Users can be left out altogether if desired(Ellis, 1996)

▫True experiments rare in DL field•Unobtrusive methods

▫Particularly log analysis▫Seen as a more natural method for studying

actual digital libraries in practice

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Research methodsFollowing Tague-Sutcliffe’s (1992) outline

• Purpose: improve subject access services• Overall methods:

▫Quasi-experimental (only one treatment)▫Log analysis

• Document collection / database▫Entire digital library (or multiple DLs)▫Sample restricted by

access time (Croft, Cook, & Wilder, 1995) collection accessed (Hagedorn, Chapman, & Newman, 2007)

• Users▫Search query providers and receivers of content▫Log analysis: statistical aggregations of behavior▫Real user queries typically used

• Data collected from logs and observations

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Research methods•Examples

▫Koch et al. (2006) Log analysis of user browsing behavior Users not directly involved

▫Hagedorn et al. (2007) Quasi-experimental Population: contents of 668 DLs Sample: 2.5 million records from 338 DLs 500 topical clusters identified via algorithm Expert judges (librarians) used to label clusters,

remove those not found useful 352 clusters found useful and used to improve

subject access services in a new DL

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Research methods•Can’t use

▫Surveys Users would have to answer questions

▫Qualitative methods Interviews, focus groups, observation Users would be involved Highly subjective on part of users and

researcher(s) (Schutt, 2009)

▫Mixed-method studies Can’t use qualitative methods as above

•Could possibly use multiple methods▫All methods would have to be quantitative

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Impact and relevance•Physical, IR-based approach had great

influence over early DL research(Borgman, 1999; Fox & Urs, 2002)▫Continues today, but to a lesser extent▫Parallels to traditional technical services

(Pomerantz, 2008)

•Those developing systems will find systems-based approaches, architectures, frameworks relevant

•Also scope for improving subject access and browsing features(Hagedorn et al., 2007; Koch et al., 2006)

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Evolving impact•Experimental method being supplemented

by unobtrusive methods (log analysis)•Bringing in (some) ideas from other

paradigms▫Connecting together semantic thesauri

(Johnson, 2004)

Still not well integrated into existing (social) information practices

Users can see and use thesauri of other communities

Softening of physical paradigm-based approach

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Evolving impact•Physical paradigm still restricted to

system-based functions, services▫CRADDL architecture restricted users to

only using collections already set up using collection servers(Lagoze & Fielding, 1998; Lagoze & Payette, 1998)

▫Places burden for providing some subject services on users and user communities

•Moving beyond these limitations could naturally lead to a social paradigm-based approach

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Social paradigm• Information

▫Phenomenon with “social significance”(Roberts, 1976, p. 249)

▫Examined “in the context of its social nature”(Raber, 2003, p. 222)

▫IR systems and research should examine the “production of knowledge”(Karamuftuoglu, 1998, p. 1071)

▫Users as active participants in this production•Digital libraries

▫Social constructions of content and services, embedded in user communities of practice, interest, and learning (Van House, 2003; Lynch, 2005)

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Subject access services• Problem has not been solved with full-text

indexing (Bates, 1998)

• Support human factors in IR and access, particularly “community efforts to capture, structure, and share knowledge”(Neuhold, Neiderée, & Stewart, 2003, p. 1)▫Services matched to domains, communities,

users(Bates, 1998; Hjørland and Pedersen, 2005)

• Aboutness is subjective(Bates, 1998; Olson, 1998; Tonkin, 2006)

▫Multiple interpretations, perspectives welcomed from different communities

▫Alterations over time allowed▫Consensus may form, but it is ever-changing as

context, communities change (Levy, 1995)

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Research questions• Individual information needs, to be satisfied

through subject access services, placed in social, cultural, organizational context

•“Nature of participant involvement” workshop (Giersch et al., 2004)

▫In National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Same DL as Lagoze et al.’s (2002) framework

▫Questions: How can we build “participant involvement in

digital libraries?” (Introduction section, para. 2) How can digital library services help build such

involvement?

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Research questions•Fox (2006)

▫How can digital libraries offer services to users “in a transparent way” such that they can “more easily integrate the vast wealth of digital content into contexts that are meaningful to them?” (p. 172)

Subject access services operating within a socially-constructed, ever-changing context of the aboutness of digital content

“Transparent” services ≠ physical paradigm Services out in the open, users fully aware of

them Integrated into context of existing practices

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Research methods•Methodology must involve users or their

behavior•Naturalistic settings and methods required

▫Experimental settings artificial, rarely used▫Qualitative interviews, focus groups

preferred, most often used methods•Methods often used to develop models

and theories of users’ involvement with digital libraries and information▫Collaboration, interaction, formation of

communities that help construct subject access services in DL

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Research methods•Example: Giersch et al. (2004)

▫Model(s) of participant involvement should include: different “stages of need, growth, and ability”

of users (“Human-moderated services,” para. 2)

multiple roles that each user serves in services that “provide value in return for the

effort of using them”(“Technology-mediated services,” para. 2)

services that are “part of users’ everyday activity” (“Expanding involvement,” para. 2)

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Research methods•Developing, testing of models requires

measuring stages, role, values, integration with users▫Subjective measures▫Intensive interviews, focus groups,

participant observation fit best▫Qualitative content analysis, quantitative

surveys possible Both best paired with other methods

Many studies of social digital libraries do use multi-method, mixed-method designs(e.g. Bishop et al., 2000)

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Impact and relevance• Increasing study of the social aspects of DLs

and social information behavior of DL users (Bearman, 2007)

•Community development of DLs and subject access services within them increasingly popular▫Giersch et al. (2004) as already discussed▫Mitchell, Mason, and Pender (2004)

Collaborative collection building Integrating technology, subject experts, subject

communities Collaboratively create metadata, “crawlers”,

and “classifiers” for discovering resources (p. 296)

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Impact and relevance•Social annotations, tagging, folksonomies

▫Collaborative “enrichment of information objects with comments and other forms” of metadata (Neuhold et al., 2003, p. 10)

▫Have been used to improve access to materials in DLs through social involvement of users Digital Library for Earth System Education

(DLESE) (Arko et al., 2006) Joyner Library Digital Collections, East

Carolina University (Guegen, 2009) Steve project (digital museums)

(Bearman & Trant, 2005; Trant, 2006)

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Impact and relevance•Tagging, folksonomies (continued)

▫“Manual subject indexing and analysis” (Voss,

2007, p. 2) a return to pre-algorithm subject access services

▫Tagging particularly useful with images Can’t index with full-text and traditional

indexing “insufficient” (Matusiak, 2006, p. 287)

▫Multiple interpretations, contexts incorporated

▫Does require a “larger scale” in order to succeed (Tonkin, 2006, Conclusion section, para. 1)

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Evolving impact•Blurring of boundaries between controlled

vocabularies and “free indexing” (Voss, 2006, p. 7)

▫Best of both approaches (Guy & Tonkin, 2006; Fox, 2006)

•Adoption of elements of both paradigms together increasing▫Mitchell et al. (2004) still included automatic

generation of metadata, but served users directly considered social context involved communities in provision of subject

access services

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Conclusion•Evolving of both paradigms is a good thing

for DLs, information science▫Some will always argue about the

wrongness of other paradigms (Roberts, 1975; Salton, 1992)

▫Both paradigms have produced useful research and results System-based architectures Use of browsing features DL services in context of users’ social lives Social annotations, folksonomies

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Conclusion•Line “between system-focused and user-

focused services is increasingly blurring” (Pomerantz, 2008, Self Service section, para. 3)

•Despite their differences, both the physical and social paradigms have a clear, continuing role to play in the crucial offering of services that provide subject-based access to the materials within digital libraries

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References

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References

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