Studying digital library users in the wild: theories, methods, and analytical approaches

As digital libraries continue the transition from research to operational status, understanding how they impact on the educational and learning practices of their users becomes an increasingly important objective for both library developers and evaluators. This workshop will examine the theoretical and methodological issues involved in the qualitative, naturalistic, and/or longitudinal study of the users of digital libraries. It will focus on the methodologies that can be used to capture the behaviors of digital library users, and the theoretical frameworks that can be used to analyze these behaviors, including ethnography, ethnomethodology, grounded theory, discourse analysis, scenarios, in-depth interviews and focus groups.