Recent Developments in Cultural Heritage Image Databases: Directions for User-Centered Design

Library Trends, Fall, 1999 by Christie Stephenson

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Although each of these projects has slightly differing goals, all of them attempt to provide unified access to images and information from diverse collections. In time, each may develop or adopt a system architecture that facilitates network-distributed discovery. However, at present, all are still merging data locally. Though they incorporate more sophisticated design elements than the MESL delivery systems, the underlying data are similar in their lack of consistency, and the interfaces are quite similar to those developed by the MESL participants. Each of these systems will likely challenge and frustrate users in many of the same ways that the MESL implementations did.

UNDERSTANDING USER NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONS: NEXT STEPS

In looking ahead, it seems clear that there are numerous obstacles to overcome in order to realize our ambitious goals for digital image delivery systems. While some of these lie clearly in the realm of technology, many depend on collaboration between human-computer interaction specialists, librarians and collection managers, evaluation specialists, and end users, both sophisticated and naive. In his 1996 article, Howard Besser (1997b) focused his articulation of next steps in a number of technical areas: preservation, authenticity, and integrity of information; image standards; image quality issues; and retrieval. Rather than revisit and reassess our progress on each of those issues during the intervening years, it may be useful to look ahead through a different lens--one that puts user needs and expectations, rather than technology, at the fore. Although the creation of image rich digital resources certainly represents a series of technological challenges, it is critical to give adequate attention as well to the fundamental questions of audience, user behavior, and use.

The examination of several broad questions can assist in developing a user-based model for directing development of image delivery systems and guiding future research:

* For whom are we building our image delivery system?

* What is it that we are building and for what purposes do those users want to use it?

* What functionality do our users need to use what we build?

This kind of design model, called User-Task-System or U-T-S (Lindermeier & Stein, 1991) helps ensure that system design does not limit users and uses. Instead, a thorough analysis of user characteristics and requirements will drive sound system design.

DEFINING THE PRIMARY USER GROUP

Moving from the analog to the digital world, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the users of our image delivery systems. In the past, it was possible to know much about our users by restricting physical access to collections to a specific group or requiring registration prior to use. The closest parallel in the digital world is to allow access only from a specific set of workstations. But as a general rule, one of our overriding principles in the digital realm is to extend access, not restrict it. This means our systems are likely to serve both traditional and new users of image resources; local and remote users; sophisticated and naive computer users; users supported by on-site assistance and who will interact unmediated with our systems; children and adult learners; and so on.