Cultural Heritage institutions regularly find themselves balancing the quality of deliverable digital image content against curatorial estimations of what users need to see as well as IT-managerial concerns like storage, delivered file size, network loads, etc. Amidst all of these considerations, the parties involved are rarely informed by studies of actual user preferences for online-viewable or hardcopy digital content. Well-established methods for discovering revealed preferences are in active use in the consumer research realm, and can be readily adapted to serve Cultural Heritage. This slideshow demonstrates how one method, conjoint modeling, can be used to inform a standard for scanning microfilmed newspapers.

1. Designing Digital Products?
“Ask” Your Users
Ronald J. Murray
Preservation Reformatting Division
Preservation Directorate

2. Once Upon A Rather Long
Time Ago…
 Libraries were “only”
storehouses of culturally
significant, meaning-
bearing physical objects
 With a point of view on
those objects that
reflected contemporary
philosophical, literary,
aesthetic, and practical
understandings of those
objects

3. Library Resources Meant
Something
 Library resources
conveyed original and
reformatted content
 In many institutions,
scribes and scriptoria
institutionalized
physical reformatting,
often in response to
state mandates

4. Library Resources Meant
Something
 Library resources
conveyed original and
reformatted content
 In many institutions,
scribes and scriptoria
institutionalized
physical reformatting,
often in response to
state mandates

5. New Types Of Library Resources
Still Mean Something
 Contemporary forms of
library resources still
convey original and
reformatted content to
library users
 Carrier physical (and digital)
characteristics support
improved resource creation
 Improved technology
revolutionizes resource
reformatting, access and
interactivity at time of use

6.  Library resources in digital
form encourage user
engagement with original
and reformatted digital
content
 Many original Cultural
Heritage resources are too
rare and/or fragile to be
displayed or handled without
damage
Library Resources For A Big
Data, Pinch-To-Zoom World

7.  Library resources in digital
form encourage user
engagement with original
and reformatted digital
content
 Many original Cultural
Heritage resources are too
rare and/or fragile to be
displayed or handled without
damage
Library Resources For A Big
Data, Pinch-To-Zoom World
This 16th century map is protected from
deterioration by a stainless steel, glassed-in
chamber filled with nonreactive Argon gas.

8.  Library resources in digital
form encourage user
engagement with original
and reformatted digital
content
 Mobile devices with easy to
use touch interfaces
encourage greater resource
interaction
Library Resources For A Big
Data, Pinch-To-Zoom World

9.  Library resources in digital
form encourage user
engagement with original
and reformatted digital
content
 Greater resource interaction
can and should generate
demands for improved
digital resource quality
Library Resources For A Big
Data, Pinch-To-Zoom World

10.  How to define digital resource quality in a fashion that
can satisfy current and future users– and can exploit
current and future technologies?
 Dictate from one’s own understanding/imposition of user
requirements?
 Define by committee … and committee … and committee?
 Define after experimenting with a few technological and/or
user factors?
 Define with the support of well-established industrial and
market research methods?
Designing Big Data, Pinch-To-
Zoom Library Resources

11.  Choice Modeling – Model the complex, strongly
subjective process library users employ to choose
between library resources “manufactured” according
to different specifications
 What is it about the library user – and what do they
want, anyway?
 What users say they notice about library resources
 What they kinds of library resources users say they
prefer
 What library resources users actually choose when
presented with combinations of possibilities
Designing Big Data, Pinch-To-
Zoom Library Resources

12.  Create a set of possible “products” whose relevant
image attributes have been varied systematically
Asking Users To Behave

13.  Create a set of possible “products” whose relevant
image attributes have been varied systematically
Asking Users To Behave

14. Asking Users To Behave
 The images are different in appearance

15.  Have a representative set of users choose among actual
versions of the “product”
Asking Users To Behave
✔

16.  Collect data. Calculate “utility” values
Asking Users To Behave

17.  Collect data. Calculate “utility” values
Asking Users To Behave
600 PPI Quality 99 Tinted Paper Strong Sharpening
Products
With High
Utility
Values Are
Preferred
Products
With Low
Utility
Values Are
Not
Preferred
These choices would
pertain to 25-44 y.o.,
intensive mobile
device users

18. Designing Big Data, Pinch-To-
Zoom Library Resources
 Remember This: Big Data is not getting smaller, and
library users’ desktop and mobile devices are
becoming more capable. Ask your users smarter
questions and you will get smarter answers!
 Enlarge our initial experiment to include more
participants, more resource types, more resource
engagement scenarios
 These methods are omnipresent outside of libraries,
tried and true, and efficient
 Our data drudgery is another’s data delight. Draw upon
others’ expertise!