Task-based digital library for the academic community.

• Main Author: Meyyappan, Narayanan.
• Other Authors: Foo Shou Boon, Schubert
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/20814
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The major objective of this research is to design a user-centered digital library (DL) for an academic community. Taking into account current practices, gaps in DL research and development, and user requirement analysis, this research proposed the use of a task-based approach to design a prototype Digital Work Environment (DWE) to serve as a one-stop access point for users to retrieve all kinds of digital information resources including those found in the institution's Intranets, library and the Internet. This was subsequently used as the basis for a set of evaluation studies that attempted to gauge the usability of DWE, including assessing the suitability of the three information organization techniques employed in the design. These included the Alphabetical (AR), Subject Category (SC) and Task-based (TB) approach for information organization. Alphabetical Resources (AR) lists all information resources in the digital library in an alphabetical order according to resource titles. Subject Category (SC) arranges all information resources according to different subject directories. In the Task-Based (TB) approach, information resources needed to perform each and every sub-task are filtered and provided for direct access by the users. The Hybrid (HY) approach is the amalgamation of all three approaches, thereby allowing a user to elect one or a combination of AR, SC or TB to complete their task.