Chiara Consonni

Effective Evaluation of Academic Digital Libraries: a Case Study at the Loughborough University Library Chiara Consonni

Evaluation is a crucial step for the development and improvement of digital libraries. Unfortunately, nowadays only few studies are focused on this matter and even fewer concentrate on how evaluation is conducted in real-world digital libraries. This study contributes to the research by presenting the results of a qualitative case study carried out at the Loughborough University Library, based on data collected from eleven semi-structured interviews and documents. It shows how evaluation is performed in a real-world digital library, the knowledge and competences of the staff in charge of conducting it, the obstacles and barriers encountered and it examines what happens afterwards, in particular how results and recommendations are turned into profitable account. The research also aims to act as a reference model for those researchers who want to further investigate this field . It confirms that currently knowledge about how academic digital libraries deal with evaluation process is insufficient and it raises several new and controversial questions, which should bring the scientific community to investigate deeper into the reality of digital libraries.