Beyond the scanned image: A needs assessment of scholarly users of digital collections

Kimura, Camden

Green, H.E., & Courtney, A. (2015). Beyond the scanned image: A needs assessment of scholarly users of digital collections. College & Research Libraries, 76(5), 690-707. doi:10.5860/crl.76.5.690

Summary: In this article, Green and Courtney (2015) report the results of their research on the needs of faculty in digital collections. Through the course of interviews with fine arts faculty and a survey of English and history faculty, they discovered that digital collections are not created with faculty needs in mind. Among the highest needs for image, text, and multimedia collections were better metadata, searchability, searchable text, and the ability to download images and multimedia (Green and Courtney, 2015, p. 695).  Overall, these interviewed and surveyed academics were not satisfied by the functionality of the digital collections that they used. This has very little to do with content, but rather with usability.  Green and Courtney conclude that digital collections need a “user-centered focus” to be of most use to academics (2015, p. 701).

Evaluation: The bad: this research probably has interesting results and implications, but Green and Courtney watered down the presentation of results so much that there is not nearly enough information for the reader to do much of anything. I would have liked more information so I could properly assess whether or not their conclusions were reasonable or even have some deeper context for their conclusions. The good: what little they do present in the paper is extremely valuable for those creating and curating digital collections, even outside of academia; usability is the most important part of digital collections. Green and Courtney conclude that users must be engaged at nearly every point in the creation of digital collections. I think this is good (albeit a bit obvious) advice for any creating digital collections. We must be first with concerned users, almost over content; if our digital collections are not created in such a way that users can use the collection the way they need to, then we have failed to create a good digital collection. Once we have determined what the users need and especially how the users will be using the collection, then we can focus on curating content. This will create the best digital collection for our users.