DIGITAL LIBRARY REQUIREMENTS: A QUESTIONNAIRE-BASED STUDY
Stephen Kimani, Margerita Antona, Emanuele Panizzi, Tiziana Catarci · IRIS Research product catalog (Sapienza University of Rome) · 2009
The gathering of user requirements is key to the gaining of a deeper understanding of the needs evolving from the user's operational context and from the use of the system. User requirements are pivotal in guiding the development process of any system. This is no less true in the arena of digital libraries (DLs). The gathering of DL requirements should be conducted with the understanding that the anticipated DL user interface should accord support to the user throughout the entire DL usage/interaction process. This chapter describes a questionnaire-based study of DL requirements based on the foregoing understanding. The study covered a wide range of issues pertinent to the design of user interfaces for DLs, including: user characteristics/profiles, current experience in DL usage, functional requirements, nonfunctional requirements, and contextual requirements. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first systematic empirical investigation of DL requirements that covers such a wide range.