Guest lecture given at UCL Department of Information Studies and Centre for Digital Humanities, 27 November 2012.

1. User Participation in
Digital Library Development
Ed Fay, Digital Library Manager
e.fay@lse.ac.uk | @digitalfay

2. User Participation in DL Development
• LSE Digital Library
• IA/UX/visual design
• PhoneBooth
• Users beyond our (digital) walls
• Measuring audience impact
• Creator support
• Questions

3. LSE Library

4. Mission | Strategy
“Build and preserve distinctive collections to support
research and learning, and represent a record of
thought in the social sciences”
“Develop our digital library so that we are able to acquire,
preserve and provide access to digital collections which
match the strength of our print collections”
“…information repository services to support new forms of
scholarly communication and enable the School to manage,
disseminate and preserve these intellectual assets”
LSE Library Vision and Strategy
http://issuu.com/lselibrary/docs/libraryvision_and_strategy

5. BORN-DIGITAL ARCHIVES DIGITISATION
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
WEB HARVESTING
PUBLIC LECTURES OFFICIAL PUBS FUTURE…
?

6. LSE Library Collections
Local £
• Research outputs (publications, data) • Journals
• Digitisation • Books
• Public lectures • Newspapers
Digital • Web harvesting (websites, blogs, tweets) • Statistics / data
• Archives (institutional, personal)
• Theses
• Official publications
• Archives (institutional, personal) • Monographs
• Theses • Journals
• Official publications • Pamphlets
Physical
• Newspapers
• Statistics
• Microfilm

7. Preservation responsibility
Local £
• Consortia
Digital • LSE Digital Library • LOCKSS
• Portico
• Archives Services • Print Collections
Physical • Consortium
• Print Collections
• UKRR

8. Making the case
• Collections audit
• Format diversity, volume/growth
• Risk assessment (threats to our strategic objectives)
• User and functional requirements (ingest, preservation, access)
• Options appraisal (‘market survey’)
• Community best practice
• Repository architectures
• Proposal
• Articulating value
• Solution: working practices, skills, infrastructure
• Development roadmap

9. Making the case: collections audit
There are known knowns; there are [digital
collections] we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say
there are [digital collections] that, we now
know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns –
there are [digital collections] we do not
know we don't know.
United States Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld
12 February 2002

10. Making the case: risk model
Activity
overlooked or
under
resourced
Inadequate
staff skills
Media Failure of
degradation or authenticity,
obsolescence integrity,
Loss of provenance
essential Loss of trust
characteristics or reputation
Insufficient Cannot
backups implement
preservation
Infrastructure plans
cannot support
requirements

11. The Iceberg Model of
Digital Libraries
interfaces
collections/objects
workflows
systems
storage
digital preservation

12. The Iceberg Model of
Digital Libraries
interfaces
collections/objects
workflows
systems
storage
digital preservation

13. Functional architecture

14. Functional architecture

16. IA/UX/visual design

17. IA/UX/visual design
1. Stakeholder workshop
2. Information architecture
3. Wireframe models
4. Concept development
5. Review/amends
6. Sign-off
7. Technical production
8. Review/amends
9. Sign-off

18. IA/UX/visual design: mind-map
• Benefits
– Support research/teaching
– Increase use of collections
– Build profile of LSE/Library
• Users
students (UG/PGT/PGR), staff
(academic/research/teaching/support),
visitors, alumni, external students,
family/local historians, members of public,
commercial users, media, school teachers,
other information pros, biographers,
depositors/donors, prospective
staff/students, funders, picture
researchers, competitors
• Content, collections
– Knowns (now)
– Unknowns (future)

19. IA/UX/visual design: mind-map
• Functional
– Focus on content
– Collate and share
– Quick and advanced search
– Categories for browsing
– Lots of entry points
• Technical
– Preservation
• Operational
– Audience discovery
– Controlled admin burden
• Creative
– Brand, reputation/authority

20. IA/UX/visual design: user personae
1) undergrad; 2) researcher;
3) lecturer; 4) journalist;
5) public policy adviser
Questions:
• How to find the digital library
• 3 features/functions/content
• What info on the homepage
• Will they contribute content
• Key messages re Library/LSE

21. IA/UX/visual design: paper prototypes

22. IA/UX/visual design: wireframes
• Prototyping tool
• Interactive models
• Review/amends
– Testing session
– Stakeholder
interaction
• Total of 5 iterations

23. IA/UX/visual design: wireframes

24. IA/UX/visual design: concept
• Mood boards
– Reference material, design examples
– ‘Modern Editorial’, ‘Real-world’, ‘Cutting-edge function’
• Design concept
– Mock-ups of 2-3 homepages
• Review/amends
– Stakeholder interaction

28. Subtle colour coding
Strong branding
Always-there
quick search
Brief welcome
Regularly
updated
Routes in for collections
different users showcase
Promotional Latest news
features and
content

29. Central interface Ability to see
to the library different views
Space for further
visualisations in
the future
Filter and drill
down on the left
Focuses the mind
on the data

30. IA/UX/visual design: testing
• Focus on:
– Navigation (discovery/use journeys)
– Search (retrieval accuracy)
– Item-level functionality (e.g. page-turner)
• Testing audiences
– Internal technical team (5 people)
– Internal stakeholder group (c.20)
– UCLDIS students (c.60)
– All Library staff (c.100)
– Other externals (ad hoc)

31. IA/UX/visual design: testing
• Information professionals
– Detailed criticism of retrieval functionality
– Number and location of search boxes;
‘advanced’ search, facets on results page
– Less focus on item-level functionality
• DH specialists
– Also reported problematic navigation
– But focused more on item-level functionality
(page turner, textual comparison)

34. PhoneBooth
http://phone.booth.lse.ac.uk/

35. PhoneBooth
• Charles Booth: systematic investigation of living
and working conditions in London, 1886-1903
– Maps, Descriptive of London Poverty 1898-9
– Police notebooks: eye-witness, street-by-street observations
http://phone.booth.lse.ac.uk/

36. PhoneBooth
• User requirements
– 2nd/3rd year undergraduates, two sessions
• Walks built into app, with podcasts
• What about streets that no longer exist? Need an overlay
• Photos/ sketches available, combine with other resources
• Link to census data (ie animated graphs from the economist)
• Link to crime maps
• Link to Mayhew
• Access handwritten/ transcribed records – issue with legibility, should be able to access both
• Be able to access data in different ways / categorise the contents
• Stations and transport
• Audio quotes of choice passages, to switch to audio as you walk
• Make maps also available on line for those without phone, able to print out etc
• ‘on this day’ quotes
• Street view (where you can hold your phone up and overlay a picture with what is currently there…)
• Alternative to street view, be able to toggle back and forth with google earth – you can easily see what is there now
• Things that still exist as they were in that time – ie pubs –Booth pub crawl
• Alert system that sends you a message when you pass something of interest – tag alerts
• Create your own map and save it, publish it not only to homepage but also facebook, other social media
• Users can interact with each other – can see popularity of certain places or entries, other users comments and the ability to add links and
etc augmenting the info with additional sources
• Second class used the example of YELP, user comments can be pasted, could see level of interest of that particular entry or location
• For comments, should be able to make public or keep private and save them
• Ability to save your maps, journal entries, notes – email to self
• Alternative is to be able to bookmark things via a login process, 2nd class didn’t see either as preferable
http://phone.booth.lse.ac.uk/

37. PhoneBooth
• User requirements
– 2nd/3rd year undergraduates, two sessions
• Technical development
– Geodata + mobile devices
• User testing
– Technical team + colleagues (c.10)
– Undergraduate students (c.12)
– Beta release (c.100)
http://phone.booth.lse.ac.uk/

38. PhoneBooth
http://phone.booth.lse.ac.uk/

39. PhoneBooth
http://phone.booth.lse.ac.uk/

40. Beyond our walls

41. Beyond our walls: content licensing
Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-SA)
“share, remix, reuse”
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/library/collections/digital/strategy_policy/content_licensing.aspx

42. Beyond our walls: content licensing
Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-SA)
“share, remix, reuse”
• Attribution
– Maintain link to the authoritative source
• Non-commercial
– Protect our investment in digitisation
– Potential for partnerships, licensing (not a priority)
• Share-alike
– Encourage openness from others

43. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

44. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

45. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

46. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

47. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

48. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

49. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

50. Beyond our walls: 3rd party platforms

51. Measuring impact

52. Measuring impact

53. Measuring impact: analytics
Visitors (weekly)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

54. Measuring impact: analytics
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Visitors (weekly)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

55. Measuring impact: analytics
Student/alumni
Radio 4 mailing lists
Reddit
Blog  Twitter
LSE homepage
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Visitors (weekly)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

56. Measuring impact: analytics
Student/alumni
Radio 4 mailing lists
Reddit
Blog  Twitter
LSE homepage
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Visitors (daily)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

57. Measuring impact: analytics
Student/alumni
Radio 4 mailing lists
Reddit
Blog  Twitter
LSE homepage
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Search (daily)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

58. Measuring impact: analytics
Student/alumni
Radio 4 mailing lists
Reddit
Blog  Twitter
LSE homepage
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Search (weekly)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

59. Measuring impact: analytics
Student/alumni
Radio 4 mailing lists
Reddit
Blog  Twitter
LSE homepage
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Referrals (weekly)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

60. Measuring impact: analytics
Student/alumni
Radio 4 mailing lists
Reddit
Blog  Twitter
LSE homepage
Political posters
Street Life in London Student newspaper
Beatrice Webb
Diary (launch)
Direct (weekly)
LSE Digital Library / Google Analytics 23-Jan-13/16-Nov-13

61. Creator support

62. Creator support: deposit agreement
• For the depositor
o Provide passwords to storage locations
o Separate permissions if deleted files are recovered
o Disposal of non-archival files (system files, browser cache, etc.)
o Disposal of original media
• For the archive
o Right to make copies for preservation
o Provision of copying services as per existing procedures
o Fixed term closure for digital archives to allow appraisal (1 year)

63. Creator support:
Digital Communications
Enhancement (DICE)
Training materials to raise awareness
of digital preservation
 research community
 information-literacy librarians
promotional leaflet
self-study training course
frequently asked questions
presentations for trainer-led sessions
http://lsedice.wordpress.com/

64. Final thoughts

65. Final thoughts
• User participation is about more than the
Library acting as a well-intentioned
gatekeeper (to content/services)
• We are not quite at the point of
participatory culture or co-creation, but
early and on-going engagement is key
• Sustainability is about evidence-based
working practices, new professional skills

66. Questions?
twitter.com/digitalfay or e.fay@lse.ac.uk
LSE Digital Library: digital.library.lse.ac.uk
PhoneBooth: lse.ac.uk/PhoneBooth
DICE: lsedice.wordpress.com