Center for Research and Development of Digital Libraries

Title:Evaluation of Digital Libraries at University of North Carolina
Presenters: Dr. Gary Marchionini & Dr. Jeffery Pomerantz, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina
Where: Manning Hall, Room 208
When: Friday, October 31st, 2003, 12:00pm

Dr. Gary Marchionini and Dr. Jeffery Pomerantz discussed their work in evaluating digital libraries at both the local and national levels. Dr. Marchionini focused on several evaluative elements that are useful when analyzing a digital library. He advocated a multi-faceted approach for such an analysis, which includes examining the system, the user actions and the human-computer interface interactions. Dr. Pomerantz spoke about the evaluative process with the State Library of North Carolina’s new chat-based virtual reference pilot project, NC Knows. His evaluation seeks to answer the evaluation question: “Is collaborative virtual reference an effective way to meet the information needs of North Carolinians?”

Title:The Digital Library Initiative at North Carolina State University
Presenters: Steve Morris, NC State Digital Library Initiatives Head
Where: Manning Hall, Room 208
When: Friday, October 10th, 2003, 12:00pm

Steve Norris discussed the North Carolina State University Digital library initiatives that are underway. Among the points that he touched on, he discussed changes and improvements in library web content and redesign, use of instructional objects and online tutorials, developments in automated reference, methods of maintaining persistent internal and external web links, management and preservation of digital objects, use of collaborative tools and methods of information delivery and advantages of pooling and decentralizing library resources.